Would Permanent Standard Time Affect Honey Bees? How Bees Keep Time Without Clocks
- 7 days ago
- 5 min read
Hi Sweet Friends!
As discussions continue about making Standard Time permanent in the United States, many people are wondering how the change would affect daily life. But here at Fingerlakes Honey Company, our minds naturally wandered to a different question:
What about the bees?
Would honey bees get confused if we stopped changing our clocks twice a year? Would they wake up "an hour early?" Would they miss the flowers?
The answer is both simple and fascinating. So grab a Lemonade with Honey and Mint
(our mint harvest is booming this summer!), settle into your porch swing, and read all about it.
Honey Bees Don't Wear Watches
Unlike humans, honey bees don't organize their lives around clocks hanging on the wall or the time displayed on a phone.
Instead, they rely on something far more reliable: the sun.
As dawn breaks and the morning warms, forager bees leave the hive in search of nectar, pollen, water, and tree resin (propolis). As evening approaches and temperatures cool, they return home.
Whether we call sunrise 5:30 a.m. or 6:30 a.m. doesn't matter to the bees. The sun still rises at exactly the same moment.
Changing our clocks doesn't change nature's schedule.
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🐝 Did You Know?
The bees you see visiting flowers aren't young bees. Most foragers are older worker bees, usually around 2–3 weeks old, who have already spent time cleaning cells, feeding larvae, tending the queen, and building wax before graduating to one of the colony's most important jobs—collecting nectar and pollen.
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The Amazing Internal Clock Inside Every Bee
Here's where things get really interesting.
Honey bees possess an incredibly accurate circadian clock—an internal biological clock that keeps roughly a 24-hour rhythm.
This internal clock helps regulate:
When bees begin foraging
When they rest inside the hive
Learning and memory
Navigation
Communication through the famous waggle dance
Even some aspects of brood care
Scientists have discovered that bees can remember what time of day certain flowers produce the most nectar.
If a patch of flowers consistently offers nectar every morning around the same time, bees often return almost exactly when the flowers are most rewarding. They aren't reading tiny bee watches—they're combining their internal clock with the position of the sun and previous experience.
It's one of the reasons honey bees are such efficient pollinators.
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🕰️ Did You Know?
Scientists have trained honey bees to visit feeding stations at specific times of day. Even when the food wasn't available all day, many bees returned at almost exactly the expected time, showing just how accurate their internal biological clocks can be.
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They Use the Sun as a Compass
Honey bees don't just know when to fly, they know where to fly.
The waggle dance, performed inside the darkness of the hive, tells other bees the direction and distance to a food source. The direction is based on the angle of the sun.
Even as the sun moves across the sky throughout the day, bees automatically compensate because their internal clock tells them where the sun should be at that moment.
Without this built-in sense of time, the directions in the waggle dance would quickly become inaccurate.
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☀️ Did You Know?
Even on cloudy days, honey bees can stay on course. They can detect patterns of polarized light in the sky—light that's invisible to our eyes—which helps them determine where the sun is hiding behind the clouds.
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Flowers Have Schedules Too
Many flowering plants operate on their own daily timetable.
Some flowers open shortly after sunrise.
Others release their strongest fragrance during certain hours.
Some produce nectar primarily in the morning, while others replenish it throughout the day.
Over thousands of years, bees and flowering plants have evolved together. Bees learn these daily schedules and often visit flowers when they're at their most productive.
It's a remarkable partnership between pollinator and plant.
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🌸 Did You Know?
Not all flowers serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner! Some blooms only produce nectar for a few hours each day, while others replenish it throughout the afternoon. Honey bees learn these schedules and often arrive when a flower's "nectar buffet" is at its best.
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Would Permanent Standard Time Change Anything?
For the bees themselves?
Probably very little.
If the United States adopted permanent Standard Time, the sun would still rise and set exactly when it always has. Flowers would bloom according to daylight, not our calendars. Bees would continue leaving the hive when conditions are right.
The biggest adjustment would likely be for people, not pollinators.
Beekeepers might inspect hives at different clock times. Farmers could shift work schedules. Gardeners may notice the sun rising "earlier" on the clock.
But the bees?
They'll simply keep following the sunlight.
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🐝 Did You Know?
A honey bee's internal clock isn't only influenced by sunlight. Temperature, food availability, and even life inside the hive help fine-tune its daily routine. During cold or rainy weather, foragers may delay leaving the hive until conditions improve—even if their "bee clock" says it's time to go.
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🌞 If You Live in the Finger Lakes...
To help visualize what permanent Standard Time would look like, here's an example using a typical summer day in the Finger Lakes region of New York.
Current System (Daylight Saving Time) | If Standard Time Were Permanent | |
🌅 Sunrise | 5:40 a.m. | 4:40 a.m. |
🌇 Sunset | 8:45 p.m. | 7:45 p.m. |
Approximate summer times shown for illustration.
Notice that the sun doesn't actually rise or set any earlier or later. The only thing that changes is what our clocks call those moments. Honey bees would still begin foraging shortly after sunrise and return to the hive as evening approaches—they would simply ignore the numbers on our clocks because they rely on the sun, temperature, and natural daylight instead.
Nature Doesn't Care What Time We Call It
Humans created clocks to organize our lives.
Honey bees have spent thousands of years perfecting something even more impressive: an internal clock synchronized with the rhythms of nature itself.
So whether we spring forward, fall back, or someday stop changing the clocks altogether, one thing remains constant.
When the first rays of sunshine warm the hive entrance and the flowers begin offering nectar, the bees will know exactly what time it is.
No wristwatch required. 🐝
Bee Part of the Conversation!
Humans have been debating time changes for decades...but the bees don't seem too buzzed about it!
What about you?
Are you Team Daylight Saving Time, Team Permanent Standard Time, or Team "Just Pick One"?
Vote in our poll below and let us know in the comments! We'd love to hear your thoughts. Meanwhile, our bees will keep waking up with the sun, visiting the flowers, and reminding us that nature has been keeping perfect time long before humans invented clocks.
Until Next Time- Stay Sweet!
Tom and Stacie
Tom and Stacie, are co-owners of Fingerlakes Honey Company located in the bee-utiful Finger Lakes region of New York State. When they are not tending to all things bees, they enjoy spending time with their grown children, their dog, and lots of chickens on their homestead. They love learning more about the bees they foster and helping others to learn more about them as well.
PICK A TEAM
Team Daylight Saving Time
Team Permanent Standard Time
Team "Just Pick One"
Other
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