Not only bees do this. Years ago I read an account of a climb where many of
the porters were from Baltistan. They each carried a Yak skin and at night
they rolled up naked in a ball with the yak skins wrapped around the
outside. When the people on the outside got cold they rotated in and the
others moved to the outside. Their primary vegetable was onions and they
expelled significant quantities of gas while sleeping. The comments
describing the odor of this ball of humanity were entertaining. One of the
climbers had to spend a night at high altitude in a tent with one of the
porters and he said he seriously considered going outside where he could
freeze to death without the odor of that awful gas. Probably not a great
photo op. /jim
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:owner-olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Dean C. Hansen
Sent: Monday, October 21, 2002 7:24 PM
To: olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [OM] Yellow Jacket
Mickey recently wrote:
Hmmm, I don't believe insects huddle up and shiver the way children
would...
- -Mickey
Actually, that's pretty much how a colony of 30-40,000 honey bees
makes it through one of our Minnesota winters. They form a "cluster" the
size of a basketball in the hive, with the outermost bees closely
huddled together to prevent loss of heat from the cluster. Consumption
of about 5 pounds of honey/month through the dead of winter can keep the
temperature in the center of the cluster, where the bees are active and
more widely spaced, in the 80-90 degree range. Sorry, but I used to
keep over 600 colonies of bees, and with the OT verbage of the last
couple posts, I though this non-OM tidbit wouldn't bee too far off base.
Dean
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