FOUND IN TRANSLATION

Using bee-free boxes and cold stretches of the Maryland Winter, they showed that synthetic boxes absorbed and maintained solar energy more effectively and (counter-intuitively to me) also kept the hive environment at lower humidity at a range of temperatures (Polyurethane honey bee hives provide better Winter insulation than wooden hives, 2022, open-access in Journal of Apicultural Research, https://doi.org/10.1080 /00218839.2021.1999578). Building on the complexity and seasonal nature of all this, Ugoline Godeau and French colleagues monitored the temperatures of different parts of dozens of hives for two years (!), giving the best view yet of energy loss and heat production within bee homes. In their 2022 pre-print study Stability in numbers: a positive link between honey bee colony size and thermoregulatory efficiency around the brood (https://ecoevorxiv.org/9mwye/) they reinforce how remarkably stable hive temperatures remain, while showing minor changes with colony size, namely that worker bee population, and not brood numbers, per se, is positively tied to temperature stability.