Happy New Year! Sorry for disappearing on you these past two weeks, but ready to go again. Today’s letter M is for Mandibles. Honey bees use their mandibles to emerge from their capped comb, build comb, and pretty much everything else they do during their short lives.
Continue readingUncategorized
L is for Larva
Happy New Year! Today’s letter L is for Larva. Becoming a larva is the second of four stages in honey bee development: egg, larva, pupa, and adult. The first three stages occur in the comb, of course, with adult bees maintaining the hive (mostly the female workers!). A honey bee larva molts 5 times, meaning there are 5 instar stages while a larva. You can find a detailed discussion on honey bee development from Jamie Ellis at the University of Florida.
Continue readingK is for Killer Bees
Today’s letter K is for Killer Bees. This is a term most beekeepers do not like or appreciate. Bees in general are not killers, and in fact most individual stings to non-beekeepers are from wasps, not bees. Since honey bees die after they sting, they tend not to do so away from their home hive.
In any case, the so-called killer bees are not African bees either. What the press calls killer bees are actually Africanized bees, a cross between western (European) honey bees and the East Africa lowland honey bee, the Apis mellifera scutellata. Western honey bees did not do well in Brazil, so the government funded a project to see if a cross-breed could fare a bit better.
Continue readingJ is for Johnston’s Organ
Today’s letter J is for Johnston’s Organ, the primary audio sensor in honey bees. Who is this guy Johnston and why does he have an organ? Well, I will tell you.
Christopher Johnston reported his discovery in 1855 in the paper Auditory Apparatus of the Culex Mosquito. Johnston was a physician, and had a son named Christopher Johnston as well. Why the son gets a Wikipedia article and the father does not, I have no idea.
Continue readingH is for Heart
Today’s letter H is for Heart. Do bees even have a heart? You may be surprised to learn that they sorta do, and sorta don’t. Like all insects, bees do not have a central circulatory system with a single heart pumping blood throughout the body. Instead, like most insects (really, most anthropods), bees have an open circulatory system that moves hemolymph throughout the body.
Continue readingG is for Glossa
Today’s letter G is for Glossa. The glossa is the tongue of an insect, especially the tube-like structure used by bees to ingest nectar and other liquids. While the word proboscis is often used for a bee’s tongue, the tongue is in fact made up of many different parts, as we saw in a post on Mouth parts earlier this year (as part of The 12 Days of Honey Bees series).
Continue readingF is for floral fidelity
Today’s letter F is for floral fidelity (see that alliteration there!). While honey bees are generalists and will gather nectar from pretty much any available flower, they prefer to forage from one plant at a time. This is called floral fidelity, and a honey bee will forage from a single type of flower on each foraging trip. Indeed, honey bees prefer to forage from the same plant all day long, and for this reason prefer trees, shrubs, and other plants with a plethora of flowers.
Continue readingE is for Exoskeleton
Today’s letter E is for exoskeleton, the outer shell on most arthropods, from insects to spiders to crabs. Mammals like you and I have endoskeletons, and internal frame for the rest of our bodies. Both types of skeletons provide a structural frame for the animal, and some animals such as turtles have both an internal (endo) and external (exo) skeleton.
In bees, the exoskeleton covers of the segments of the bee: the head, thorax, and abdomen, as well as legs and antennae. The exoskeleton is composed of a polymer of glucose and can support a lot of weight with very little material (from bee-health.extension.org), and protects bees from desiccation (losing water). Having an exoskeleton also prevents adult bees from growing, meaning they must shed their skin repeating during larval stages in order to grow.
Continue readingD is for Dufour
Today’s letter D is for Dufour, as in Dufour’s gland. First discovered by Léon Jean Marie Dufour in 1841, Dufour’s gland occurs in the abdomen of some female insects, part of the sting apparatus in some bees, wasps, and ants of the suborder Apocrita. Exocrine glands like Dufour’s glands secrete chemicals, but the nature and function of Dufour’s gland secretions are not well understood (see pensoft.net article).
Continue readingC is for Corbiculae
Today’s letter C is for corbicula, or pollen basket. The corbicula (plural corbiculae, of course) is where honey bees place their pollen while foraging. It is part of the tibia on the hind legs of some female bees, and is essentially a hollow tube in the leg where the bee pushes pollen, along with a plate, or pollen press, When the bee flexes the leg, the pollen is pressed into the basket (and squishes out the sides a bit, too).
Continue reading
Bees with eeb 