Early in the 18th century, the poet Isaac Watts posed a little conundrum for the nursery that has survived three hundred years:
How doth the little busy bee
Improve each shining hour,
And gather honey every day
From every opening flower?
The answer has strong meteorological connections.
In pursuit of its industrious vocation, the honey bee normally buzzes through the air at something like 15 to 20 miles an hour. It can move faster for short periods if it has to, but in so doing, it consumes much of the sugar it has gathered by converting it to energy and as a result, the honey yield is lower. It follows that winds in excess of these speeds for any length of time reduce the productivity of a hive.
Rain, too, is a great enemy. A severe wetting is very bad for bees - as indeed it is for all of us - but for the bees there is the added risk of drowning in a burst of heavy rain. And the workforce is also very sensitive to temperature; it apparently finds work quite unappealing at temperatures below 16 or 17 degrees. All in all, in fact, a bee is not really efficient unless the weather is quiet, warm and sunny. When it deteriorates, or fails to improve in the normal way when summer comes, the bees just stay at home and pass their idle time as best they can.
Bees are particularly sensitive, it seems, to thunderstorms. When a thunderstorm is imminent, the bees in the hive become agitated and aggressive, a form of behaviour which some scientists believe is related to the increased electrical activity in the atmosphere which precedes a severe thunderstorm.
But other weather parameters also affect their equanimity. Studies have shown aggression in bees is positively related to temperature, humidity, barometric pressure and solar radiation, and negatively related to wind speed. This, in plain language, means bees are allegedly at their most aggressive on hot, sunny, humid days when there is little wind. And it is surprising that this should be so, since these, as we have seen, are the very conditions suited to their principal task: the gathering of nectar for their honey.
However, bees are clever creatures - even to the extent, some say, of being able to make their own weather forecasts and to plan their work accordingly:
When bees to distance wing their flight
Days are warm and skies are bright;
But when their flight ends near their home
Stormy weather is sure to come.