Study Guide Questions Flashcards
What is the scientific name for the European honey bee?
Apis mellifera
What are the subspecies of apis mellifera?
Italian (A. m. linguistica) Caucasian (A. m. caucasica) Carniolan (A. m. cornica) German (A. m. mellifera) African (A. m. scutellate)
What are the races of Apis mellifera?
Cordovan
Russian
Buckfast
What is the scientific name of the Asian honey bee?
Apis cerana
Subspecies
-A. c. nuluensis
What is the scientific name of the Giant honey bee?
Apis dorsata
Subspecies
-A.d. binghami
-A.d. laboriosa
What does eusocial mean?
- cooperative care of young
- reproductive division of labor
- overlapping generations sharing the
What is haplodiploidy
A sex determination system in which males develop from unfertilized eggs and are haploid, and females develop from fertilized eggs and are diploid.
What are some characteristics of the queen?
- larger than workers
- sole reproductive female
- lays 1,000-1500 eggs each day
- Lifespan: 1-5 years
- non-barbed stinger
- ovarioles (~150 each ovary)
- produce pheromones
- spermatheca
What are some characteristics of a worker?
- facultatively sterile
- hive upkeep and foraging
- 20,000-45,000 and up to 60,000 in the hive
- barbed stinger, dies when stings
- lifespan: ~4-6 weeks in summer, up to several months in winter
- ovarioles (~2-5 each ovary)
- produce pheromones
- pollen baskets, corbicular hairs
What are some characteristics of drones?
- sexual maturity at ~two weeks
- sole function is mating
- dies after mating, or forced out of colony
What is holometabolous?
Complete metamorphasis.
Among honey bees:
egg, larva, pupa, adult
How many days does it take for an egg to develop to adult emergence?
- queen
- workers
- drones?
- queen: 16 days
- workers: 21 days
- drones: 24 days
How many drones does a queen typically mate with?
12-14
What is the timeline for a queen to be mated?
- a single virgin queen will survive and will mate within a week
- queens mate with multiple drones (12-14) , mated sign
- should start egg-laying within a week of being mated
All female larva are fed the same diet for _____ days.
Three days
What distinguishes queen development from worker development?
- Queens are continually fed royal jelly
- special protein (royalactin)
- certain plant compounds are absent
- Workers are fed brood food
- a mix of glandular secretions, pollen and honey
By the _____ instar, there are significant differences in the developing ovaries between the castes.
Fifth
What is apoptosis?
The death of cells which occurs as a normal and controlled part of an organism’s growth or development.. There is widespread apoptosis of worker’s ovaries.
What is the age range of house bees?
~1-20 days old
What are the tasks of house bees?
- comb building
- hive cleaning
- undertakers
- brood, queen and drone care
- hive guarding
- climate control
- storing/use of nectar, pollen and propolis
How old are forager bees?
~20 days old until death, which is highly variable
What are tasks of forager bees?
- nectar (wax production, honey production)
- pollen (proteins for food)
- water (hydration, climate control)
- plant resins (propolis = sealant = antimicrobial)
What are the three conditions under which queens are created?
- swarming (natural process of colony production)
- supersedure (current queen is replaced due to injury, laying fewer eggs, more drones)
- emergency (queen dies or we squash her)
What are the differences between a virgin and mated queen?
Virgin
- moves erratically
- slender
- no retinue
- flies readily
Mated
- moves slowly and predictably
- large abdomen
- will only fly if swarming
- retinue present
What is a “mating sign”?
Mating occurs on the wing, and drones leave a mating sign — remnants of the reproductive tract of the last one to two drones she mated with
Each drones produce _____ of semen, and there is _____ per each microliter.
Each drone produces ~0.5 -3 microliters of semen, and there’s ~5 million sperm per one microliter.
Queens receive between _____ million sperm during mating and store between _____ million.
Queens receive between 87-200 million sperm and store 4-8 million.
What are the changes in a queen post mating?
- queen activates her ovaries and initiates egg laying (~1,500 eggs per day)
- queen is no longer phototactic, won’t fly unless the colony swarms
- she has changes in her pheromone profiles
- there’s a large change in her gene expression
What are the causes of suboptimal mating?
- poor quality of queens or drones
- poor rearing conditions and/or nutrition, environmental toxins, parasites, disease
- poor mating conditions, bad weather
- lack of healthy drones
What are the consequences of suboptimal mating?
- reduced stored amounts of sperm (queen runs out of sperm faster, resulting in supersedure or drone layer
- reduced genetic diversity in the colony (genetic diversity is critical for disease resistance and productivity
- suboptimal pheromone production (queen produced a less attractive pheromone blend and are more likely to be superseded)
The characteristics of a queenless colony are:
- queen pheromone is absent
- worker ovaries can be become activated and they begin to lay only males/drones
- hopelessly queenless colony rarely accepts new queen
Who produces pheromones?
- queens: composition depends on age, mating status, and qualities; regulates social organization of the colony and has many effects of workers
- brood: communicates if larva are hungry, ready to be capped
- worker: alarm pheromone
Communicate can be chemical and physical (dance).
- chemical
- identification of colony members
- each colony has its own smell
- workers use it to identify intruding bees
- dance
- Carl von Frisch - Austrian zoologist crakced the dance code (foraging) of honey bees
- round up (up to about 50-100 yards) versus waggle dance (direction, distance greater than 500 to 100 yards, quality)
- scouts communicate information about potential new nests during swarming
The morphological role of the honey bee head:
- information processing
- food and pheromone production
- feeding
The morphological role of the honey bee thorax:
- locomotion (legs and wings)
- pollen collection
The morphological role of the honey bee abdomen:
- digestion
- reproduction
External structures of the honey bee include:
- antennae
- mandibles
- compound eyes and ocelli
- hamulii (wing hooks)
- corbicula (for pollen collection
Internal structures of the honey bee include:
- mushroom body (info processing)
- glands (mandibular, hypopharengeal, wax)
- crop (nectar foraging)
- spermatheca (queen sperm storage)
- ovarioles (queens and workers)
- venom sac (queen and workers)
Vertical transmission of pathogens means:
-transmitted from mother to offspring
Horizontal transmission of pathogens means:
- transmission among individuals
- trophallaxis
- food
- fecal route
- STDs
- via parasites (varroa mites)
What are fomites?
Objects that carry pathogens, beekeeping equipment, hive tools, protective equipment
What is individual immunity?
- Innate: Immediate, general defense against pathogens, intrinsic ability of the organism to defend itself agains non-self (present without previous exposure to a pathogen)
- Adaptive: Specialized response, once exposed to a specific pathogen individual retains ability to respond to this challenge (it can create a “memory” of a pathogen so subsequent exposure causes faster response
What is social immunity?
- collective defenses against pathogens and parasites
- hygienic behavior: workers detect and remove parasitized or infected immatures
- social fever: workers increase temperature
- self-medicating: propolis
- self-removal: undertaking
What modulates immune responses?
- Developmental stage and caste
- Parasite infection
- Nutrition
Essential components of the Langstroth hive:
- Bottom board: Screened, solid
- Frames: Foundationless, plastic, wood w/ plastic
- Covers: migratory, telescoping
- Brood boxes: Deep, medium, shallow
Ways to obtain honey bees:
Packages
- 3lbs of bees
- mated queen can be included
- shake bees on to your equipment
Nucs
- 3 to 5 frames of bees
- mated, laying queen included
- usually build up faster than packages
Splits
- split a strong colony into multiple
- can naturally requeen, add queen cells, introduce a queen
Swarms
-make sure to buy a queen!
