There's More to a Winter Bee Than Meets the Eye

I read the most interesting thing on honey bee biology regarding winter bees vs. summer bees, courtesy of the Association of Southern Maryland Beekeepers newsletter: 

The critical portion of a summer bee's life is the first 21 days when the young bees are performing hive duties. Their hypopharyngeal gland produces royal jelly and it is the young bees that feed it to the developing larvae. (Although all bee larvae receive some royal jelly, the future queen bee is fed this substance exclusively and in high quantities.)


The gland is not active throughout the whole bee's life but only about the first 30 days. That’s why you must have a continuous supply of young bees emerging in order to maintain brood development. This is why, it is hard to lose a queen and requeen if you wait too long to replace her. If the break in brood cycle is too long, you may not have enough young bees to feed the new queen’s larvae. That is also why adding sealed brood from another colony helps.

In the early fall, the queen lays "Winter bees" and the hypopharyngeal gland in these winter bees is active for a much longer time and is the reason why the colony can survive a break in the brood cycle that would not be possible in the summer season.