Bee Royal Jelly

A whole colony of bees living in a glass exhibit case died at the Royal Ontario Museum at the beginning of Februaury 2011. An investigation is currently underway in an attempt to discover why the bees died, as they had seemed to be healthy.

Museum staff has ruled out human negligence and say that the bees did not die of starvation. If the bees had been in an ordinary hive, they would have lived off the honey they had made in the summer months, but these bees were fed sugar water regularly to keep them alive.

It may be that the bees were struck by a disease, or that the queen failed to lay enough worker bees eggs. The worker bees are essential to the survival of the hive and the queen bee stops laying eggs around mid-October and only begins to lay eggs again after the winter period at the end of February.

Another possible reason for the deaths is poor ventilation, but we won’t know why the bees died until the museum has conducted a thorough investigation.

Source
BBC.com
URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12437121
Retrieved on 2. March 2011