Located near the Munday Library, this Abelia bush which was in full bloom during the summer is now lacking its brilliant white blooms.
The turn of November marks the arrival of Austin’s reoccurring cold fronts and the departure of the once abundant and busy honey bees. The once blooming Abelia bush that was covered in honey bees in hot summer month of September has now lost its blooms and sits in solitary in its spot by the Munday Library. This makes my original prediction correct in that the number of bees and amount of noticeable activity would dramatically decrease as the semester progressed and the temperatures continued to drop. It is no mystery as to why the honey bees have disappeared as this happens every year around the same point in the season.
With an average lifespan of about six weeks starting in the spring, it would be a surprise to find any honey bees still hard at work at this time of the year, though it does happen (Gould, 2015). In a honey bee colony, it is the sterile females, known as workers, that conduct the laborious work of leaving the hive and collecting nectar. It takes about 550 workers to make just a pound of honey, so they immediately set to work after their metamorphosis, utilizing every minute of daylight (Gould, 2015). Though these busy bees do not work everyday. It has been found that even honey bees take days off, especially when the weather takes a turn for the worst, which is likely what they did during the first cold front of this year. After their six weeks is up, the worker bees return to the hive as their final resting place where specialized bees remove their bodies to keep the colony clean and tidy (Gould, 2015). However, it is only the worker bees that have this minimal lifespan. The rest of the colony, including the fertile males and queens, hibernate for the winter until spring returns and they can reproduce once again. These bees can live up to eight years in which they continue to populate the hive. Even if the worker bees stayed alive for the winter, they would have minimal options for collecting honey. For example, the Abelia bush located at my site is in full bloom during the summer but gradually depletes as the temperatures drop (Fowler, 2006). The flowers are small and white and emit a very strong scent during the summer but turn light pink and purple during the colder months. While it was the ideal flower to collect nectar from during the warmer season, it offers very little as the temperatures gradually decline.
All of this research is consistent with my last few observations that were made over the course of the middle of October to now. On especially cold and dark days, there would not be a single worker bee at my site. They would return once the cool front would move out and get right back to work, though there were considerably less than there were at the beginning of the summer. I also noticed that their movements were not as rapid as they were before, but rather much slower. Whether it was because they were nearing the end of their lifespan and were weak or because there was less competition, I am not sure. The Abelia bush blooms also decreased as the semester went on and stopped producing the intensely sweet smell that I had noticed during my first observation. Now it is about mid-November and there are only a few blooms remaining on the bush and I have not seen a single bee in a few weeks now. It seems that both species are done for the year and will return in the spring once the temperatures rise once again.
References
DeWeerdt, S. (2015). The Beeline. Nature. 521(7552), 50-51. Retrieved October 8, 2017, from http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v521/n7552_supp/full/521S50a.html
Fowler, A. (2006). Abelia. Horticulture Week. 18-19. Retrieved from https://login.ezproxy.stedwards.edu/login?URL=?url=https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.stedwards.edu/docview/225437139?accountid=7075
Gould, J. (2015). Meet Our Prime Pollinators. Nature, 521(7552), 48-49. Retrieved October 8, 2017, from http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v521/n7552_supp/full/521S48a.html