Honey Bees Flashcards
How does a queen bee mate?
- goes out on mating flights
- attracts drones with attractant pheromone
- collects sperm from drones from other colonies
What is the role of a queen?
- lays eggs
- runs colony with pheromone
What is the role of drones?
- mate with queen
- keep colony happy with pheromone
What is the role of workers?
- in-hive tasks, guarding, foraging
- tasks start at inside of hive and work their way outwards
What are some important queen bee glands?
- mandibular gland
- nasonov gland
- koschenikov gland
What does the queen bee regulate with pheromones?
- temperature control (too hot: water and wings, too cold: shimmy)
- retinue behaviour (care for queen)
- hive work
- prevent competition by inhibiting workers ovaries from developmental and prevent queen rearing
- swarm attraction
- drone attraction
- worker repellent (for when queens fighting)
What does the queen bee use the queen mandibular pheromone (QMP) for?
- hive maintenance
- preventing ovary development and queen bee rearing
- swarming attraction
- retinue behaviour
What are the important glands of the worker bees?
- mandibular glands, nasonov glands, glands of stinging chamber
What functions do worker bee pheromones have?
- to signal good water or food source (nasonov)
- to keep everyone together (nasonov)
- hive entrance (nasonov)
- alarm pheromone (tip abdomen up and fan) (Koschevnikov and mandibular glands)
- slow maturation of bees if lots of foragers (ethyl oleate)
What functions do drone pheromones have?
- calm colony
- drone attraction
- cannibalism (if 2n male larvae occur)
What functions do brood pheromone have?
- care
- recognition (distinguish between workers and drones)
- queen marks eggs with pheromone
What two dances do worker bees perform?
- round dance (found less then 100 m away)
- waggle dance (orientation gives direction of food source using gravitational sense organs)
How do bees use vision?
- hairs on eyes tell them speed of flight
- better vision in UV creates landing strips on flowers
- can recognize individual human faces, shapes, paintings, colours
How do bees use their antennae?
- olfactory and mechanosensory receptors
- if one antennae removed still functional
- if one antennae removed and one glued, must move head
How do bees differ from wasps?
- pollen and nectar -> carnivorous
- mandibles and proboscis -> mandibles
- branched hairs -> straight hairs
- perennial nest -> annual nest
- wax comb built on vertical -> paper comb built on horizontal
- large barbs on stinger-> small barbs on stinger
