Honeybees Flashcards
who makes up a honeybee colony?
Adults:
- One queen
- hundreds of thousands of female worker bees
- Hundreds of male drones - present sometimes, not always
Brood:
- Eggs
- 10,000s Larvae
- Pupae.
job of queen
- To lay eggs
- To keep workers in a group
through chemical communication
job of workers
- Nest - Finding a nesting site, building nest, cleaning and maintenance
- Bringing pollen, nectar and water; and propolis
- Feeding larvae and queen
- Maintaining nest temperature
- Guarding and Defense
bee glue is a resinous mixture that bees produce by mixing saliva and wax with exudate collected from tree buds, sap flow or other plant sources. It is used as a sealant for unwanted openings in the hive.
job of drones
mate with a new unmated queen (not of their own nest) and pass sperm to her
special physical features of worker bees
(1) body covered by hair; (2) 1st pair of legs; (3) 2nd pair of legs; (4) 3rd pair of legs; (5) claws and pads on legs; (6) honey stomach
- Body covered with hair: To trap pollen
- 1st pair of legs:
- Antenna cleaner and velum: to keep the antennae clean.
- Pollen Brush: to groom the body and gather pollen
- 2nd pair of legs:
- Spur: to dislodge the pollen load
- Pollen Brush: to groom the body and gather pollen
- 3rd pair of legs:
- Pollen basket (corbicula): to hold and carry pollen load
- Pecten or rake: row of hair to hold on to pollen load
- Auricle or pollen packer/press: to stuff pollen in to pollen basket
- Pollen comb: to groom the body and gather pollen
- Claws and pads on each leg.
- Claws hold on to various objects such as twigs, edge and surface of the nest, etc.
- Pads to handle wax, propolis or pollen.
- Honey stomach - nectar is stored and carried back to the nest in this
describe where honeybees live
- single-comb (made of one wax comb) or multi-comb (made of many wax combs) nests
- Combs have hexagonal cells to store pollen and nectar for brood development (EXPLAIN THIS PROCESS HERE)
- may also live in artificial bee boxes in frames where they form combs
- wax used for combs is produced in abdominal glands of workers in white rice-grain-like structures
explain the process of brood development in hexagonal cells in combs
- queen bee lays an egg in a hexagonal cell
- egg develops into larva
- larva gets food from workers
- larva forms pupa
- honeybee emerges from pupa
what species of honeybees live in small single-comb, big single-comb and medium/big multi-comb nests?
Small, open-nesting single
- Apis andreniformis
- Apis florea (Asian Dwarf Honeybee)
Big, open-nesting single
- Apis dorsata or Giant Rock Honeybee
- Apis binghami,
- Apis breviligula,
- Apis laboriosa,
Medium-sized close-nesting multi (species often used for commercial bee-keeping)
- Apis cerana or Asian Honeybee
- Apis mellifera or European / Italian Honeybee
- Apis koschevnikovi,
- Apis nigrocincta,
- Apis nuluensis
daily colony requirements of honey and pollen
- Honey: ~ 200 gm = 2,00,000 mg
- Pollen: ~ 95 gm = 95,000 mg
since workers are tiny and can only carry about 15mg at a time, 1000s of trips must be made per worker bee every day
explain the process of workers finding food (pollen, nectar, water) for the colony
- Bees are tiny and can carry only 15 mg at a time
- 1000s of trips needed, and she asks other bees in the nest to help
- When a honeybee worker finds a
patch of flowers, returns to nest to tell nestmates:
a. the distance of the flower patch
from the nest and
b. the direction of the flower patch
- communicated by dancing: round dance and waggle dance (must explain all of this in extreme detail now)
what is the round dance?
- done if food is near, i.e. around 150m from the nest
- bee dances in circles on nest surface
- Other bees follow her, touch her with their antennae to know whether or not she is dancing
- The dancer gives little bit of food
to the followers so they know what to look for - Dance only tells the distance of food from the nest, not the
direction.
what is the waggle dance?
- done if food is far, i.e. more than 100m away from the nest
- bee dances in the figure 8, then goes in a straight line and shakes her abdomen from side to side - the ‘waggle’
- then she turns right, goes in a half
circle and comes to starting point - she then returns to a straight line and waggles
- then turns left, goes in a half
circle and comes to the starting
point - No waggling done when making half circles
- Dance tells both distance and direction of food - MUST EXPLAIN THIS HERE!!!!
- Waggle dance also has different dialects
how does the waggle dance tell both the distance and direction of food?
DISTANCE:
- Time taken for waggling and number of double turns tells distance
- waggle run of 1 sec duration
= about 700 meters, SO a waggle run of 4.5 sec duration = 5.2 kilometers
DIRECTION:
- Imagine there are two important lines connecting sun to the honeybee nest and honeybee nest to food source
- If angle b/w them is 45 degrees, for example, means food source is 45 degrees to the right of the sun
- Imagine vertical line running from the bottom to the top of the nest inside the hive representing direction of sun
- during straight line part of waggle dance, angle the bee waggles in relation to the vertical inside the hive matches the angle between the food and the sun outside - in this case, 45 degrees to the right of the vertical
dialects of the honeybee waggle dance
- different species of bees, like Egyptian, Italian and German bees, have their own “dialects” - how long a bee waggles to communicate the same distance to food.
- Egyptian bees need more time per waggle run for the same distance compared to Italian or German bees. (Italian longer than German)
difference between Apis florea and Apis andreniformis and all other honeybee species
- all other honeybee species dance on the
vertical surface of the nest. - A. florea and A. andreniformis dance on the horizontal surface of their nest with axis of waggle coinciding with the line connecting the nest to the food source
- direction of waggle run directly points at the direction of the food source.
who discovered the honeybee dance language?
Austrian scientist Karl von Frisch, won Noble prize in 1973
extra information
The Dutch biologist Nikolaas (Niko) Tinbergen, the
Austrian biologist Konrad Lorenz and the Austrian
biologist Karl von Frisch shared 1973 Noble prize in
Physiology and Medicine.
Together these three scientists are called pioneers of the
field of ethology or Animal Behaviour – the branch of
science that studies animal behaviour in the context of
animals’ natural surrounding.
(Film: Fly Away Home – as an example of Behavioural
Imprinting, the topic studied by Konrad Lorenz.)
robotic bees
- designed to mimic the behaviors and functions of real bees, particularly for research, pollination and tasks
- may be solution to problems like declining bee population resulting in lower pollination of crops humans use as food
- cost, limited battery life and complexity of natural behaviours
how do honeybees regulate temperature?
DO MORE RESEARCH
In winter:
Huddle together and vibrate
their wing muscles to generate heat
In summer:
- Spread thin on the nest
- Fan the nest with their wings
- fan at the nest entrance creating air
circulation - bring water and evaporate it by fanning and thereby cool the nest.
HOW DO HONEYBEES DEFEND THE COLONY?? WAVELIKE PATTERN
- raise and lower their abdomens in coordinated waves, creating a shimmering effect that confuses or intimidate predators like birds and hornets
- illusion of a larger or more aggressive defense force.
- starts from the point closest to the threat and radiates outward across the surface of the hive
- passive defensive strategy that protects the colony without risking the lives of individual bees - swarming and stinging is last resort
Japanese honeybees and hornets
Japanese honeybees have evolved to
make a ball of their bodies around the
attacking hornet
raise their body temperature and eventually heat-kill the hornet.
explain the stinging defense mechanism of honeybees
- barbed stinger connected to venom sac lodges in the skin of larger animals
- stinger delivers venom, causing pain and swelling to attacker
- venom releases pheromones that signals other bees to join in the defense
- last resort because part of abdomen is torn away resulting in death
