Honey bee
| Honey bee |
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Honey bees are species of bees belonging to the taxonomic genus Apis, which are best known for their use in creating honey.
Anatomy
The honey bee has three main part: head, thorax, and abdomen. [1] Antenna, compound eye, mandible, and proboscis are in the honey bee's head. Antenna are used for honey bee to find where is smell direction. The compound eye is used for see color, light and direction. Mandible is used for grasping, biting, or cutting. Proboscis is like a straw that brings the liquid to the mouth. [2]
The thorax has legs and wings. The honey bee has 3 pairs of legs and has two kinds of wings, one is the hind wing, and the other is the forewing. The hide wing and forewing are used for flying, however the forewing is larger than the hind wing. Legs are used for movement or carry something. [3] And finally in the abdomen, there is the stinger. The stinger used to defend themselves, and if the bee stings someone, they soon die. [4]
Reproduction
The honey bee has only one queen. The queens life is to make more bees. The queen lays over 1,500 eggs per day, and a fertilized egg grows up to be a female honey bee, worker honey bee, and queen, however a unfertilized eggs become a male honey bee, and drone. On average, growth up to the queen from egg to adult takes 16 days; worker bees takes 21 days; and the drone bees takes 24 days. [5]
Ecology
The honey bee is a cold-blooded animal, however their bee hive temperature is always kept the same temperature. Specially, larva and pupa's growing area is always keep 32~35 degrees celsius. During the summer, temperature goes up high, worker bees bring water from outside and apply water on surface of the hive, so cold air will come inside of the hive, then make the inside of house's temperature go down. And when they need the temperature higher, the worker bee will not use their wing, vibrate their thorax muscles. This helps honey bee's hive temperature to go up. However, the honey bee will stop work when temperature is less then 21 degrees celsius. The honey bee is not good at sense of sight, and use the antenna for smell.
They use a waggle dance for communication. There are two kinds of dance, one is the round dance, and the other is the wagging dance. The round dance is use to tell that the food is 100 meters or more far from where they are, and wagging dance is used when food is near from them. [6]
Bee Keeping From
Bee Keeping is really useful to people, there are lots of reasons. First, is bee keeping gives commercial value that using honey bee to collect nectar and pollen. Second reason, is use honey bee to fruit tree and fruit vegetable's bee pollination, that is more successful than human work. And last, sugar is not good for our health, so honey can replace sugar as a sweetener. This is helpful to the health of many people. This is why people continue bee keeping, and United States has more than 200,000 beekeepers. [7]
Gallery
Western honey bee or European honey bee
(Apis mellifera)
Dwarf Honeybee
(Apis florea)
Asiatic honey bee or Eastern honey bee
(Apis cerana)
Giant honey bee
(Apis dorsata)
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References
- Apis by Myers, P., R. Espinosa, C. S. Parr, T. Jones, G. S. Hammond, and T. A. Dewey. 2006. The Animal Diversity Web.
- Anatomy of Worker Honey Bee by Bee Buzz for Kids.
- Apiculture Factsheet #104: The Honeybee Colony by the B.C. Ministry of Agriculture and Lands.
