A honeybee colony behaves as a single superorganism, holding the brood nest at a remarkably stable ~35°C year-round regardless of what the weather is doing outside. Below this window, brood development slows and can fail; above it, proteins denature and larvae can be cooked within the comb. This cutaway hive lets you push the colony toward both failure modes and watch the workforce respond.
On the hottest days a strong colony can carry in and process several litres of water, almost entirely for evaporative cooling rather than drinking — and if that supply is cut off, hive temperature can climb fast enough to kill developing brood within hours.
A 3D cutaway of a beehive showing how the colony acts as a single superorganism to hold its brood nest at a stable ~35°C — clustering and shivering when it's cold, fanning and evaporatively cooling with water when it's hot.
How fanning bees, water foragers and colony size interact to counteract outside heat, and how clustering counteracts cold — plus what happens to brood-nest temperature when cooling capacity runs out of water.
Set the outside temperature, the number of fanning bees, water supply, and colony size, then watch the brood-nest temperature readout and the 3D hive respond with fanning, mist, foraging flights or a tightening winter cluster.
A strong colony can bring in litres of water on a hot day purely for evaporative cooling — cut that supply and brood-nest temperature can spike into the danger zone within hours, even with full fanning effort.