The cleaning flight keeps the hive clean and disease-free. It also gives relief to honey bees.
Finally spring! The temperatures are slowly rising and the first warm days are appearing. In addition to starting work in the garden, you can finally hang up your laundry outside again. But what is that? The freshly washed clothes that have just been hung up are suddenly full of small brown dots. There is a simple explanation for this phenomenon: the cleaning flight of the bees - more precisely: the honey bees.
What is the cleaning flight of bees?
If the temperatures slowly climb from February, you can see the first bees outdoors again. Her cleaning flight also takes place during this time. To put it a little less beautifully, one could simply say "go to the toilet" when the bees clean their flight at the end of winter. Honey bees spend the winter together in their hive, where they don't defecate unless it's unavoidable due to illness. All bees make the cleaning flight more or less simultaneously as soon as the temperatures allow them to fly again. If you have hung up your laundry near a beehive at exactly this time, it can quickly be used as a toilet by the entire colony.
Notice: The cleaning flight can quickly become dangerous for honey bees. For example, cold winds make it difficult to fly home. If white snow looks like the sky, the bees can fall in there. Too low temperatures quickly lead to the death of the small beneficial insects.
What is the purpose of the bee cleaning flight?
What is so beautifully described as the cleaning flight of the bees stands for a natural need of the small farm animals. honey bees overwinter in their hive all winter as they would freeze to death fairly quickly outside. However, they do not defecate there, as this would promote the transmission of diseases, for example. Each individual bee collects its droppings over the months in a droppings bladder, which can make up up to 80% of the abdomen. In the spring, honey bees now feel the urgent need to relieve themselves, which is implemented in the cleaning flight.
Tip: The cleaning flight of the bees can also trigger one or the other neighborhood dispute between beekeepers and residents. In principle, however, bee colonies must be tolerated as long as their keeping is customary in the area. This is the case, for example, if the bees can find sufficient food in the area.
Bees are extremely important to our ecosystem. There are several ways that each individual can do something to help support bees and other insects. These include reducing lawn mowing or planting bee friendly herbs, flowers, trees and perennials. With our Plantura bee pasture, which was developed together with beekeepers, you will receive, for example, a mixture of flowers from over 20 proven species. They cover a long flowering period from May to September and delight bees with their splendour.
