Bee

“Bees are descended from predatory wasps, but they no longer prey on other insects.”

Any beekeeper knows that life on earth would be very difficult without these insects. Though not all provide honey, many of them are pollinators of plants that provide food for humans and other animals. As they move from flower to flower, build and maintain their nests and look after their young, bees are the epitome of industry and hard work. Yes, some of them sting, but it’s worth it. Read on for more about these amazing insects.

4 Incredible Bee Facts!

• The female Megachile pluto is about as long as a grown-up human thumb. She has huge jaws that she uses to collect resin for her nest.
• In general, the lifespan of a male bee is much shorter than that of a female. Females build nests, lay eggs, and raise the young, and even infertile honey bee females work themselves to death gathering pollen and maintaining their hive. Males have only one job, and in the case of the honey bee, he dies doing it.
• Even when the stinger of a honey bee is pulled out of her, muscles in the stinger both work it deeper into the skin and pump out more venom.
• They are haplodiploid, which means that females come from fertilized eggs and males come from unfertilized eggs.

Scientific Names

Bees are members of a clade called Anthophila. Anthophila is made up of the Greek words anthos, which means “flower” and phílos, which means “beloved.” So the word can be translated into “flower lover.” Besides this, there are 4,000 genera and 16,000 to 20,000 species of bee.

Evolution And Origin

Bees have an origin from 120 million years ago, during the Cretaceous Period, where they evolved from what was an ancient predatory wasp. Although, the bees that we know mostly feed on the pollen and nectar from flowers, their ancestors were carnivores and would sting other insects, paralyzing them, and bringing them back to their nests to feed. A fossil from over 100 million years ago, found in Myanmar, shows a transition from this hunter wasp to bees.

Types Of

There are over 20,000 different kinds of bees throughout the world with 4,000 of them being endemic to the United States. Bees are closely related to wasps and ants and are best known as a honey-producing species. Here are just a few of the bee species:

• Bumble Bee
• Honey Bee
• Carpenter Bee
• Perdita minima – known as the world’s smallest bee
• Franklin’s Bumblebee – the rarest bee in the world. Found only in southern Oregon and northern California.
• Mason Bee
• Leafcutter Bee

Appearance

These animals have the usual insect body plan. Their bodies are divided into a head, a thorax, and an abdomen. They have four thin, translucent wings and six legs and use their legs to build and dig, and some use their hind legs to carry pollen. They also have combs on their legs to help them clean their antennae. The insects have huge compound eyes and three tiny eyes called ocelli above them. Their antennae are segmented and branched. Bees also differ from other insects in that their bodies are plumper, as can be seen in the pleasingly fat bumblebee.

Bees can come in a great variety of patterns and colors and range in size from 2.36 inches in length to so small they can just be seen with the naked eye.

Behavior

These insects can be solitary or communal. Honey bees famously live in hives dominated by a queen, who is the only female allowed to reproduce. The honey bee workers, who are her daughters, take care of her, her eggs, the larva, and pupae, and make sure that the hive is kept in good order. Honeybees also communicate where sources of nectar and pollen are located through the famous “waggle dance.” Workers also defend the hive, sometimes sacrificing their lives to do so. Males or drones are there to mate with the queen. They die soon after, and even if they don’t, they’re kicked out of the hive because they no longer serve a useful purpose.

Solitary bees don’t have this sort of communal structure. All the females in a solitary species can reproduce, and each one builds her own nest and forages to find pollen for her larvae. Because of this, they can be as good at pollination as honey bees, even as they don’t make honey or wax.

Some solitary bees appear to be social because they build their nests next to the nests of conspecifics. However, they don’t help each other build nests or raise their young, and their groups are called aggregations as opposed to colonies. Other solitary bees actually share a single nest, but each insect has its own cell.

Brood parasites often can’t collect their own pollen so they take over the nests of bees who do. They’ll lay their eggs there, and when the larva hatches it eats the pollen meant for the original larva. Most bees also fly during the day, though there are those that fly at dusk. These insects usually live in the tropics.

Habitat

Bees are found wherever there are flowering plants. Indeed, the two evolved together and influenced each other’s evolution.

Diet

The great majority of bees have a diet of pollen and nectar. The few exceptions include the carrion or vulture bees from South America. They collect carrion, which they actually turn into a type of honey. Sweat bees also drink human sweat. Also, while many people believe bees like carpenter bees eat wood, the truth is they only bore into wood to store food and create nests for feeding larvae. Like other bees, carpenter bees eat nectar and pollen.

Predators And Threats

These creatures have a great many predators and threats, as even the largest of them is a little insect, and some predators seem immune to stings. Predators include birds such as woodpeckers, flycatchers, and bee-eaters. Badgers and bears tear open the hives and eat the honey and the brood. Crab spiders and praying mantises ambush bees as they visit flowers. The Japanese giant hornet, nicknamed the “murder hornet” seems to like to catch honey bees and tear their heads off before eating them. People also eat bees, and brood is especially rich in nutrients.

But a greater threat to the insects, especially honey bees is a drastic population decline that scientists believe might be caused by pesticides, parasites, illness, climate change, pollution, or destruction of habitat. Colony collapse disorder is a strange phenomenon that happens when the workers in a hive simply disappear and actually abandon their queen. Scientists are not completely sure why this happens, but possible culprits are mites and pathogens.

Reproduction And Life Cycle

The insect’s reproductive life depends on whether it is solitary or communal. Bees start looking for mates very soon after they emerge from their pupae, and after mating the female builds a nest to begin her family. She will excavate cells in which to lay her eggs, and some such as leaf-cutter bees will line them with bits of leaf or flower petals. Nests might be underground or in wood. The queen honey bee lays her egg one by one in a honeycomb made of beeswax. After the first brood grows up, they’ll be the ones who make the honeycomb and take care of the brood. Other bees don’t bother to build their own nest but lay their eggs in the nest of another bee.

Population

The population of bees is about 2 trillion, but some species are in better shape than others. Apis mellifera, for example, is listed as Data Deficient, though it’s understood that its populations have declined.

What would happen if bees went extinct? You can find that in this article.