Some studies have reported that summer bees rather than winter
bees were found in colonies going into the winter. The
difference is in the smaller fat reserves, leaving summer bees
with much shorter lifespans. When the fat reserve is used up, a
bee leaves the colony to die away from the hive. Lots of bees
leaving at the same time leave behind an empty hive, the
beekeeper calls it CCD or Marie Celeste or dwindling disease.
The trigger for winter bee production in a healthy colony is the
shortening of daylength after the summer solstice, June 21st.
Depending on your type of bee, winter bee production should
commence soon or slightly later after that. If the colony is
under the influence of neurotoxins, like neonicotinoids, the
bees might not be able to perceive the change of daylight and
continue production of summer bees. It has already been proven
that neonicotinoids reduce the memory of bees in field studies
(reutrn rate of foragers) and in the lab (training experiments).
A compromised memory would make perc