Brood nest

Definition

Roughly spherical and positioned centrally in the nest, with pollen stored around it and honey above and outside. Temperature is regulated within about a degree, because brood reared too cool emerges with malformed wings and impaired learning. Colonies defend the brood nest's temperature ahead of almost everything else.

Bee records that discuss this

• Western honey beeThe bee behind essentially all the world's honey, and the one most people mean when they say 'bee'. Apis mellifera is a perennial eusocial insect that overwinters as a living cluster rather than dying back each year — which is the whole reason it stores honey in quantity, and therefore the reason it was ever domesticated. It is native to Europe, Africa and western Asia and has been carried by people to every continent except Antarctica.
• Egyptian honey beeThe honey bee of the Nile valley, and the subspecies depicted in the oldest images of beekeeping anywhere — the Fifth Dynasty reliefs at Abu Ghurab from around 2400 BCE show this bee being smoked, extracted and jarred. It is small, yellow, nervous and superbly adapted to desert heat, and it has been progressively displaced within Egypt by imported Italian stock.

Guide records that discuss this

• How bees regulate hive temperatureA honey bee colony holds its brood nest between 34 and 35 °C year-round, in climates ranging from Siberian winter to Australian summer. It does this with shivering, fanning and evaporative cooling, and the precision matters.
• Honey in ancient EgyptThe bee was a royal symbol, the beekeeper a recorded profession, and honey a medicine, an offering, a tax payment and a preservative. Egypt gives us the earliest detailed picture of organised beekeeping anywhere.

Question records that discuss this

• How do bees keep the hive at the right temperature?A honey bee colony holds its brood nest at roughly 34-35 °C year-round, within about half a degree — tighter regulation than most mammals manage. It heats by shivering flight muscles and cools by fanning and by evaporating water it has deliberately collected. The colony thermoregulates; no individual bee does.