Home▸Biology▸The Colony Energy Budget: Metabolic Costs Versus Foraging Income

🍯 The Colony Energy Budget

A 3D honey bee hive where you control outside temperature, forager numbers and brood size, and watch the colony's metabolic costs and foraging income drain or fill its honey reserves in real time.

Biology3DAdvanced60 FPS

A honey bee colony's income is nectar and honey brought home by foragers; its expenses are thermoregulation, brood-rearing and flight. This simulation lets you tip that balance and watch the honey reserve rise or fall.

🔬 What It Demonstrates

Thermoregulation cost rises steeply as outside temperature drops below the brood-nest optimum, while brood-rearing and flight costs scale with colony activity. Net balance between income and total cost fills or drains the honey tank over time.

🎮 How to Use

Adjust outside temperature, forager population and brood nest size, or jump straight to a season preset. Watch the cluster tighten and vibrate faster in the cold, and the amber reserve respond to the live budget readout.

💡 Did You Know?

A winter cluster with no brood to warm can survive a cold snap that would bankrupt a spring colony feeding a large brood nest at the same outside temperature — brood-rearing is one of the costliest lines in the budget.

⚙ Under the hood

A 3D honey bee hive where you control outside temperature, forager numbers and brood size, and watch the colony's metabolic costs and foraging income drain or fill its honey reserves in real time.

beeshivemetabolismforagingsimulationecologycolonyThree.js

3D · Three.js / WebGL renderer · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install