Temperature-Dependent Clustering Behavior of Aethina Tumida Murray in Apis Mellifera L. Colonies

Temperate races of honey bees (Apis mellifera) are able to survive cold temperatures by forming thermoregulatory clusters. Small hive beetles (Aethina tumida), which inhabit honey bee colonies in their native range of sub-Saharan Africa and in their introduced ranges of the United States and Australia, are able to endure temperate climates by entering the bee cluster when cold temperatures persist. We conducted an experiment to address the temporal aspects of the cluster-entering behavior of small hive beetles. We did this by exposing beetle-infested observation bee hives to different ambient temperatures and counting the number of beetles remaining in confinement sites on the hive's periphery at each temperature. The resulting regression analyses suggest that the beetles enter the cluster more rapidly than they exit it, a behavior possibly linked to a colony's decision to form and dismantle a cluster.