Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/12/23/how-bees-stay-warm-in-the-winter.html
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They eat and shiver and cluster together to stay warm - just like us (minus the petroleum distillates)
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Also how the workers kill the queen bee when she gets old or diseased.
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Stop that! And put your mask on!
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Is it indeed? I checked and couldn’t find anything on the subject. Searching quickly finds articles like this about regicide, but those are stingless bees not honeybees. It also mentions it happens in other insects like yellowjackets and I know it happens in bumblebees. But there it is not some “for the good of the hive” thing, the hive is dying anyway and it is essentially a worker’s revolution by more dominant individuals who see the chance to lay their own eggs instead.
It would have to work differently in honeybees, and given that it such a well-known species isn’t given as an immediate example, I wonder if it normally happens.
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Cross-post opportunity with the 2020 Uprising and/or Commie Memes thread? 
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I was just thinking of that.
I thought maybe the Japanese bees had evolved to do something very specific but it looks like it’s just an extension of a normal evolutionary trait they all share.
What they do is distinctly different in that purpose but it’s using a trait they all already have so there is a difference and they should all be able to do that but I wonder why the others never figured it out.
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The search term you’re looking for is “balling the queen” See http://dave-cushman.net/bee/queenball.html for example where the behavior is documented as observed in European honeybee colonies by multiple beekeepers. As for why a European honeybee colony would ball the queen, I think we’re still guessing.
One thing to note is that if the hive has at least one healthy, fertilized egg(several hundred would be better) and conditions would allow her to breed, the colony can raise a new queen and keep going.
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Thank you. I know they can raise new queens, but that would also mean workers are trading production of sisters for nieces, which does not quite have the same genetic advantage as trading them for sons. From what you linked and some searching it does not seem so well understood…maybe often a response to possible foreign queens rather than routine replacement, for instance, but tough to be sure. I appreciate you pointing me to that.
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Already found it, thanks! 
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