Bees are winged insects that feed on nectar and pollen from flowers and sometimes produce honey. There are around 20,000 species of honeybees, of which 270 live in the UK. More than 90% of honeybee species are solitary, but the remaining species, such as honeybees and bumblebees, live socially in colonies consisting of a single queen bee, female worker bees and male drones.
The largest wasp, Wallace's giant wasp, can grow up to 4cm in length, while tiny stingless wasp workers are smaller than a grain of rice. Wasps live on every continent except Antarctica, and in all habitats with flowering plants that are pollinated by insects.
Honeybees pollinate many of the plants we rely on for food, but their numbers are declining.
Bee species numbers have been declining for decades and bees are now missing from a quarter of the places in the UK where they were found 40 years ago.
undefined
How intelligent are honeybees?
Bees are highly intelligent creatures: they can count, solve puzzles and even use simple tools.
in An experimentIn a study, bees were trained to jump over three identical, evenly spaced landmarks to reach a sugar reward 300 meters away. When the number of landmarks was then reduced, the bees flew much farther; when the number of landmarks was increased, the bees landed a shorter distance away.
This suggests that the bees were counting landmarks to decide where to land.
in Another studyScientists have created a puzzle box that can be opened by twisting the lid to access sugar.
Solution: Press the red tab to rotate the lid clockwise. Press the blue tab to rotate it counterclockwise. Not only can bees be trained to solve puzzles, they can also learn to solve problems themselves by watching other bees solve them.
In terms of tool use, Asian honeybees have been known to collect fresh animal waste and smear it around the hive entrance to repel predatory Asian giant hornets. This may smell a bit, but it also counts as tool use.
Scientists have previously shown that honeybees can learn to use tools in the lab. Fecal discovery in 2020 This is the first observation of tool use by wild honeybees.
Honeybee Anatomy
The head includes:
1. Two compound eyes 2. Three small, lenticular eyespots (called ocelli) 3. Antennae that detect smell, taste, sound, and temperature 4. Chewing jaws, often used as nest building material 5. A proboscis that sucks up nectar, honey, and water
The thorax consists of:
6. Bee body 7. 3 pairs of legs 8. Two pairs of wings
The abdomen contains the following:
9. An esophagus, or honey stomach, for transporting nectar to the nest 10. Stinger – A sharp organ used to inject venom
How do bees communicate?
Honeybees have two primary modes of communication: expressive dance and expressive olfaction.
Honeybees use their famous “wag dance” to guide hive-mates to nectar- and pollen-rich flowers. Returning from a successful scouting mission, a worker bee scurries to one of the hive's vertical combs and begins tracing a figure-eight pattern.
When it reaches the straight center of its shape, it vibrates its abdomen and flaps its wings, a motion that makes the bird's wings wag like a tail.
The length of the tail flick indicates the distance to the flower, with each second increasing the distance traveled by 100 metres.Communicating direction is more complicated but can be done by the bee orienting its body in the direction of the food, relative to the sun.
The intensity of the dance indicates the abundance of food sources, and the dancers also release a cocktail of pheromones that spur nestmates into action: Colony members watch the dance, smell it with their antennae, and then set off in search of flowers.
There are other dances too, such as the “round dance” where the hips are not shaken and is used to indicate the position of flowers.
Nearby, forager bees perform their “trembling dance” to gather their swarm members together to collect nectar from worker bees.
How do bees travel?
A honeybee can travel miles to find food in distant flower fields, yet still reliably find its way home – and with a brain the size of a sesame seed! So how does it do this?
First, they use the sun as a compass. Honeybees' eyes are sensitive to polarized light and can penetrate thick clouds, meaning that even on cloudy days, honeybees can “see” the sun and use it as a guide. Combining the position of the sun with the time indications of the animals' internal clocks allows honeybees to figure out both direction and distance.
Bees also monitor how much the sun moves while they are migrating, so that when they return to the hive they can tell their hive-mates where the food is relative to the sun's current position, rather than where it was when they found it.
Finally, honeybees are known to be able to sense magnetic fields through some sort of magnetic structure in their abdomen, so researchers believe they may also use the Earth's magnetic field to help them navigate.
read more:
What does a bumblebee nest look like?
Bumblebees are plump, hairy bees that look like they can't fly. There are 24 species in the UK, of which 6 are parasitic and 18 are social.
Social species, such as garden bumblebees, form colonies and nest in protected places out of direct sunlight – good places include abandoned rodent burrows, compost piles, birdhouses, tree holes and spaces under sheds.
Unlike honeybee nests, which are elaborate structures with hexagonal cells, bumblebee nests are messy structures of cells, often insulated with leaves or animal fur, and designed to house small numbers of bees (about 40 to 400) during one nesting season.
In contrast, a honeybee hive can house up to 40,000 bees and last for many years.
Parasitic bumblebees, such as the giant cuckoo bee, don't build their own nests – instead, the queen invades other bumblebee nests, kills the queen and lays her own eggs, which are then raised by the local worker bees.
When did honeybees evolve?
Hornets are said to be cruel and are universally disliked, while honeybees are seen as benevolent and widely revered, yet honeybees evolved from hornets.
Bees belong to the order Hymenoptera, which also includes sawflies, ants, and wasps. The oldest Hymenoptera fossils date to the Triassic Period, about 224 million years ago. Wasps appeared in the Jurassic Period, 201 to 145 million years ago, and honeybees appeared in the Cretaceous Period, 145 to 66 million years ago.
Trigona prisca was one of the first species. Stingless bees discovered immortalized in amber in New JerseyThey flew about 85 million years ago, and the key specimens were female, worker bees with small abdomens, indicating that some bee species had already formed complex social structures.
The first animal-pollinated flowers had already evolved by this time and were pollinated by beetles, but the evolution of bees prompted the evolution of flowering plants, which prompted the evolution of bees, and so on.
This is one of the best examples of co-evolution: flowers evolved nectar and a funnel-shaped head, while bees evolved a long tongue to drink the nectar and specialized hairs to transport the pollen.
Can humans survive without bees?
Probably not, but the disappearance of honeybees would pose a serious threat to global food security and nutrition.
One third of the food we eat relies on insects like bees to pollinate the plants they grow, transporting pollen between them – from staples like potatoes and onions to fruits like apples and watermelon to condiments like basil and coriander.
For example, coffee and cocoa trees depend on honeybees for pollination, as do around 80% of Europe's wildflowers.
Bees are also a food source for many birds, mammals and insects, so if they were to disappear, their role in the ecosystem would be lost, with knock-on effects for many other animals and plants.
It's bad news, then, that honeybees are in global decline due to habitat loss, intensive farming, pollution, pesticide use, disease and climate change. Recent studies have found that the global decline of pollinating insects is already causing around 500,000 premature human deaths per year by reducing healthy food supplies.
What should I plant to make my garden bee-friendly?
Most bee species aren't too picky about where they get their pollen and nectar from, so plants like lavender, hollyhocks and marigolds attract a variety of bees.
But other species are more specialized and depend on fewer plants. These bees are often rare, and if the plants they need to survive disappear, local bee populations can be at risk.
Raise yellow-flowered bees for yellow-flowered bees. Yellow-flowered bees are medium-sized bees that frequent this plant in search of pollen and aromatic oils. Females use the oils to waterproof their nests, which are often found on the banks of ponds and rivers.
Lamb's ear is an easy-to-grow evergreen perennial that is a favorite of wool-carder wasps. Female wool-carder wasps use the soft, hairy leaf fibers to line their nests, and males defend territories that contain these plants.
Another easy way is to let your grass grow long and embrace the weeds.
Dandelions and related plants like honeysuckle and chickweed are favorites of pantaloon bees, so named because the long hairs on the female's hind legs, covered with pollen, look like clown trousers. Buttercups, in turn, attract large pincer bees and sleepy carpenter bees.
5 Common Myths About Bees…Bullshit
1. Bees are too heavy to fly – This myth dates back to the 1934 publication of Antoine Magnin's “Book of Insects.” Magnin mistakenly believed that bees' wings were too small to generate the lift needed for flight. Obviously, he was wrong.
2. All bees sting – Male honeybees cannot sting; the stinger is a modified egg-laying organ that only females have. There are also about 550 species of stingless bees, but their stingers are too small to be used for defense.
3. If a bee stings, it will die. – Of all the bees that can sting, only the honeybee dies after stinging. The barbs on the bee's stinger get stuck in the victim's skin and when the bee tries to escape, its abdomen bursts, causing a fatal injury.
4. All bees make honey – Most bees don't make honey. In fact, there are only eight species of bees that produce large amounts of sweet nectar. There are hundreds of other species of bees that produce honey, but in much smaller amounts.
5. All bees are hard workers – As busy as honeybees are, aren't they? The queen bee lays up to 1,500 eggs a day. The worker bees forage, feed the larvae, and clean the hive. But the drones don't have as much work to do in a day. Their only role is to mate with the virgin queen bee.
read more:
Source: www.sciencefocus.com
