The knowledge of bees

The generic term for HYMENOPTERA, Insecta. Italian bees (represented by Italian bees) and Chinese bees (represented by China bees) are valuable honey production and extensive breeding. Bees, whose chest backboard is less than the wing base, have branched or feathered bodies, and their hind feet are usually used for collecting pollen. Adults are covered with villi, and there are pollen collecting organs composed of long hairs on their feet or abdomen. Chewing and sucking mouthparts are unique characteristics of insects. Totally perverted. About 15000 species are known all over the world, and about 1000 species are known in China. Many kinds of products or behaviors are closely related to medicine (such as honey and royal jelly), agriculture (such as crop pollination) and industry (such as beeswax and propolis). They are called resource insects.

There are about 20,000 species of HYMENOPTERA Apocrita insects, including the well-known bees (1230 Apis) and bumblebees (1230 Bombus) and (Psithyrus), and thousands of species of bees similar to wasps and flies. Adult bees are about 2 mm long? 4 cm (about 0.08? 1.6 inch).

Bees are closely related to some kinds of wasps. The main biological difference between them is that bees (except parasitic bees) feed their young bees with a mixture of pollen and nectar, while wasps feed their young bees with animal food or insects and spiders. In addition to the differences in food preferences, there are also some structural differences. The most basic difference is that wasps are covered with unbranched hair, while bees have at least some branched or feathery hair, and pollen usually adheres to it.

Bees feed entirely on flowers, including pollen and nectar, which are sometimes made into honey for storage. There is no doubt that bees are pollinating it as well as collecting pollen. When bees collect pollen between flowers, they will drop some pollen on the flowers. These fallen pollen are very important because it often causes cross-pollination of plants. The actual value of bees as pollinators is greater than the value of making honey and beeswax.

Drones usually have a short life span, do not collect pollen and are not responsible for feeding young bees. Worker bees are responsible for all the work of nesting and storing food, and usually have special structures to carry pollen. Most bees collect pollen from many kinds of flowers. However, some bees only collect pollen from flowers of certain families, some bees only collect pollen from flowers of certain colors, and some bees only collect pollen from flowers that are related. Bee's mouth is a tool for collecting and carrying pollen, which seems to be able to adapt to different kinds of flowers.

Most bees of Apiidae live alone or are not gregarious. If they don't live together, each female builds her own nest (usually in underground caves) and stores food. This kind of bee has no hierarchy. Some solitary bees build chimneys or horns at the nest mouth, while others build nests on trees or twigs and bamboo. Most adult bees living alone don't live long. In some species, adult bees only fly for a few weeks a year, and the rest of the time stay in the nest room in the form of eggs, larvae, pupae and young bees.

Solitary bees provide all the food needed for the full development of larvae in a sealed state. Social bees, such as bumblebees and bees, gradually feed their larvae. The life circle of social insects, refer to the articles of bumblebees and bees.

Apiioidea * * * has 8 families: 1. Colletidae is a primitive group, similar to wasp, with 5 or 6 subfamilies, about 45 genera and 3000 species; 2. Anniidae, a medium-sized solitary ground flower bee, includes some parasitic species; 3. Honeybees (ground bees or burrowing bees), some species are attracted by sweat, so they are also called sweat bees. The most famous sweat bee is Dialictus zephyrus4.Oxaeidae is a large fast-flying bee, and its structure is similar to Anthuridae. 5. Bee family, a transitional bee between lower and higher levels; 6. Agonidae is famous for its exquisite nesting structure; 7. Formicidae (including carpenter bees and cuckoo bees), with three subfamilies, was once considered as a subfamily of Formicidae; 8. Umbelliferae, including bumblebees, ground-digging bees or ground-flower bees.

The so-called "killer bees" is a cross between African bees and European bee subspecies. This Afro-honeybee subspecies escaped from the north accidentally in 1957 when a prolific hybrid bee adapted to tropical climate was cultivated in Brazil. This kind of bee can fly about 320 times a year. 480 kilometers (200? 300 miles), 1980 flies to Mexico, 1990 flies to Texas. Today, it is widely distributed in most parts of the southwestern United States, including southern California, southern Nevada and all parts of Arizona. In addition, more and more africanized bees have been found in Florida. They are believed to have caused hundreds of deaths. This africanized bee is smaller than the European species and has little pollination effect on plants. Although the toxicity is not strong, it reacts quickly to the threat of habitat, and it takes a long time to recover.

Living habits

Bees lay eggs in nests, and larvae live in nests. Larvae living in groups are fed by worker bees, while larvae living alone feed on female bees stored in the nest room bee bread. When the bee bread eats them up, the larvae mature and pupate, and emerge from the cocoon when they emerge. Domestic bees breed several generations a year, and wild bees breed 1 ~ 3 generations a year. Overwintering with mature larvae, pupae or adults. Generally, males appear earlier than females, with short life span, and do not undertake the tasks of nesting, storing bee bread and raising offspring. Female bees build nests, collect pollen and nectar, and store them in the nest room. Their life span is longer than that of male bees.

Bees feed on plant pollen and nectar. Food habits can be divided into three categories: ① polyphagia, that is, eating different families of plants or flowers of a certain color (not limited to plant species), pollen and nectar of wishful bees and Chinese bees. (2) Oligophagia, that is, feeding on flowers of related families and genera, such as alfalfa wasps. (3) Monophagy, that is, feeding only from certain plants or related species, such as cornflower bees. The flowers interviewed by various bees are closely related to the length of mouthparts: for example, species with short mouthparts such as Labiatae, Aphidae and Aphidae interview the open flowers of Rosaceae, Cruciferae, Umbelliferae and Ranunculaceae; However, due to the long mouthparts, sawflies, honeybees and other species use deep flower tubes to interview flowers, such as Leguminosae and Labiatae.

There are three ways of life:

Sociality. Male and female worker ants live in the same nest, but there are differences in morphology, physiology and division of labor. Female individuals are large and good at spawning and reproduction; Males are smaller than females, specialize in mating and die after mating; Worker bees are small female bees with genital hypoplasia. They specialize in nesting, collecting food, feeding larvae, cleaning the nest room and adjusting the humidity of the nest. Italian bees and China bees are social species. Besides, there are bumblebees, tropical stingless bees and wheat bees.

Loneliness. The vast majority of bees live alone, that is, worker bees nest alone to collect powder and store grain, and they have no "grade" differentiation. Each nest room is open, the inner wall is coated with wax and other moisture-proof substances, and enough bee bread is stored in the room. Female bees lay eggs on the bee bread and close their nests. Larvae feed on bee bread in the nest. Most species belonging to this category are wild species, such as Aphidae, Aphidae, Formicidae, Tenebrionidae, Aphidae and Formicidae.

Parasitic. Female bees don't build nests, but lay eggs in the host's nest. Larvae generally has a large head and upper jaw, which is used to destroy the eggs or larvae of the host.

The nesting instinct of bees is complex, and the nesting place, time and nest structure are diverse. The nesting time is usually in the flowering period of plants. According to the nesting site and nest texture, it can be divided into the following categories: ① Species engaged in social life take wax secreted by themselves as spleen, such as bees, stingless bees, wheat bees and so on. The nest room is hexagonal. ② There are the most kinds of nests in the soil, and the interior of the nest room is coated with a mixture of wax and saliva to keep the humidity of the nest room. (3) The ways of using plant tissues to build nests are more diverse. For example, LEPIDOPTERA can roll plant leaves into tubes to form nests and put them in natural cavities; Mylabris uses plant hair to make wart nests on the stems; Lupine and LEPIDOPTERA insects nest on the stems of dead plants; Some kinds of bumblebees nest under the litter of the forest; Wood wasps drill holes in wood to build nests, and so on. (4) Others, for example, the genus Myzus uses saliva to adhere to small sandstone to build nests, and the genus Myzus builds nests in the shell of slugs.

Beehives are generally scattered, but there are also similar bees that have been concentrated in one place for many years, thus forming a nest group. For example, the number of nests of hairy feet can reach dozens or even hundreds.

Edit the geographical distribution of this part.

The geographical distribution of bees depends on the distribution of nectar plants. It is distributed all over the world and has many tropical and subtropical species. The distribution of different subfamilies or genera has certain limitations For example, bumblebees in the bee family are mainly distributed in the north temperate zone and can extend to the Arctic, but there is no record of distribution in the tropics. Short-tongued bees are distributed in Australia; Trichogramma subgenus of Trichogramma of Meliaceae is only distributed in central Asia. Aphidae are distributed in tropical areas. Bees are distributed in different landscapes, and most of them live in grasslands, forests, valleys, mountains and deserts. Each landscape belt has a representative genus or species. For example, the ground bumblebee is a forest grassland species, the ground bumblebee is a typical grassland genus, and the quasi-bees are mostly grassland species.

Edit the classification and evolution of this paragraph

According to fossil data, a large number of bees have been found in the late Eocene strata of Tertiary. Its appearance is closely related to the prosperity of flowering plants in the late Cretaceous.

Apiioidea is close to melioidea in classification, and its ancestor may have originated from a branch of melioidea. However, due to different eating habits, morphological characteristics tend to differentiate. The evolutionary characteristics of bees are: chewing and sucking mouthparts to form powder collectors and branching hairs; Eat nectar and pollen in adult and juvenile stages; The emergence of groups and social lifestyles; Polymorphism and parasitism in superfamily.

In Insecta, bees belong to the advanced evolutionary group. The emergence of social life style, the transmission of "language" information, the method of identifying beehives through "dance" movements, and the different structures of nests.

The economic significance of editing this paragraph

Bees are one of the insect groups that are beneficial to human beings. It pollinates crops, fruit trees, vegetables, grasses, camellia oleifera crops and Chinese medicine plants, and the yield can be increased by several times to 20 times. Honey is a tonic commonly used by people and has the reputation of "milk for the elderly"; Bee pollen is known as the "mini nutrition bank", and royal jelly is a high-grade nutrient, which can not only enhance physical fitness and prolong life, but also treat chronic diseases such as neurasthenia, anemia and gastric ulcer. Bee venom is effective for rheumatism and neuritis. Beeswax and propolis are both raw materials for light industry.

All bees feed on pollen and nectar. Nectar can be converted into honey in the digestive tract. All female honey has a kind of thorn. Bees and giant bees (big round bees with black bodies) are both insects, but most of these bees live alone, and some live in other bees' hives and get food from other bees. A typical bee colony has a queen bee who can lay eggs and a worker bee whose sex has not yet evolved; There are also many fertile drones.

According to different species, the number of worker bees generally ranges from 12 to more than 50000. They collect nectar and pollen, and if they are bees, they will also send them to specific places, which is obtained by dancing a particularly strict dance. Their duties include making honey, making wax beehives for storing food and living larvae, and taking care of bees and queen bees and keeping the beehives expanding. Bees are a perennial group. New queen bees will be kept. The old queen bee then left the hive with a group of worker bees and rebuilt her home elsewhere. Bees are very useful. Because they can also pollinate plants like insects.

There are many drones, and a group may be nearly a thousand. The only duty of the drone is to mate with the queen bee. When mating, the queen bee flies out of the nest, and the whole group of drones chases after it. It's called marital escape. The queen bee's marriage and mate selection are carried out through flight competitions, and only the winner can become a spouse. After mating, the drone's genitals fall off in the queen's genitals. At this time, the drone has completed its lifelong mission and died. When the males who failed to mate with the queen bee returned to the nest, they only ate and drank, and could not collect honey, becoming redundant idlers in the colony. After a long time, Feng Gong will deport them. Beekeepers don't want to keep too many drones in the bee colony and consume honey, so they are artificially eliminated. From this point of view, worker bees have the largest number in this group. The number of worker bees kept by beekeepers in a colony varies with seasons, generally 2 1500 worker bees. Worker bees are the most industrious. The song "Little bees are busy all day, picking flowers and making honey" only refers to worker bees. In addition to collecting powder to make honey, building nests, feeding larvae, cleaning the environment and defending bees. It is also the task of worker bees. From spring to late autumn, bees are busy every day during flowering. Winter is the only short leisure time for bees. However, the cold weather and the low temperature in the hive are not good for bees, because bees are warm animals, and their body temperature changes with the temperature of the surrounding environment. The clever little bee came up with a special way to resist the cold. When the temperature in the hive is as low as 65438 03℃, they are close to each other in the hive and form spherical clusters. The lower the temperature, the closer the colony is, which reduces the surface area and increases the density of bee colony to prevent excessive cooling. According to the measurement, in the coldest time, the temperature in the bee ball can still be maintained at around 24℃. At the same time, they also use more honey and exercise to generate heat to raise the temperature in the nest. In cold weather, the surface temperature of the bee ball is lower than the center of the ball. At this time, the bees on the surface of the good ball drill into the center of the ball, while the bees in the center of the ball move outward. They took care of each other, changed places repeatedly and spent the cold winter. How do they eat honey stored in beehives during wintering and balling? Smart bees have their own tricks. They don't need to break up the spheres and climb out to eat separately, but pass them on to each other to get food. Bees belong to Hymenoptera and Apiidae. Life goes through four stages: egg, larva, pupa and adult.

In the bee society, they still live a matriarchal clan life. Among the members of their big family, there is a queen bee (queen bee), a female bee with reproductive ability, responsible for laying eggs and reproducing, and at the same time "ruling" this big family. Although the queen bee has mated, her eggs are not all fertilized. It can give birth to fertilized eggs and develop into female bees (sterile worker bees) according to the needs of large families; You can also give birth to unfertilized eggs and develop them into drones in the future. When the extended family members of this group multiply too much, resulting in crowding, they should be grouped. The process of grouping is as follows: worker bees make a special hive-Wangtai, where queen bees give birth to fertilized eggs; After the larvae hatch, worker bees give them special treatment and feed them with highly nutritious royal jelly made in their bodies. After the larva develops into an adult, it becomes a new queen bee with reproductive ability. The new queen bee leads some worker bees to fly to form a new bee colony. Oriental bee. Both China bees and Italian bees are beneficial insects, and they are widely raised. In the process of reproduction, the new queen bee will be artificially grouped after birth, otherwise a queen bee will lead a group of worker bees to leave the hive and fly away, thus losing the colony. Beekeepers artificially produce royal jelly. In fact, they artificially made some queen bee platforms and put them in beehives for the queen bee to lay eggs. When the larvae hatch, the worker bees feed them royal jelly, and the beekeeper will take it out. In fact, beekeepers use deception, which shows that even smart bees are sometimes deceived.

Edit the propagation mode of this paragraph.

Male bees reproduce asexually (oviparous), queen bees and worker bees are diploid and developed from fertilized eggs; Mutually beneficial relationship

Edit this part of the division of labor of bees.

Bees are divided into three types:

Queen bee:

The queen bee's task is to lay eggs. The secreted queen bee hormone will inhibit the ovarian development of worker bees and affect their behavior in the hive. The queen bee is a queen bee built by worker bees and cultivated with fertilized eggs. Worker bees take special care of the fertilized eggs of queen bee platform and feed royal jelly until the larvae pupate, allowing queen bee larvae to infiltrate into royal jelly. Royal jelly is rich in protein, vitamins and biological hormones, which plays an important role in promoting the growth and development of queen bee larvae, especially the development of female reproductive organs. As the queen bee larvae grow, the worker bees raise the base and finally seal it.

The new queen bee came out of the house, very gentle, and the worker bees combed her. The successful mating queen soon began to lay eggs. After mating, virgin queen bees generally don't leave the nest except for dividing bees. The queen bee is slender and steady, with a life span of three to five years, and the longest can live for eight or nine years. The amount of eggs laid is the highest in spring and before and after flowering.

Drone:

Xiong Feng's task is to reproduce after mating with the queen. Xiong Feng does not participate in brewing and collecting production, and the individual is bigger than the worker bee. Male peaks are developed from unfertilized eggs. It grows in a bigger male peak room, and the worker bees feed it better. The whole development process. The male peak larvae eat twice or twice as much as the worker bee larvae. It takes a long time for the reproductive system of the male peak to develop, and it takes about eight to fourteen days to reach sexual maturity after emergence. When the drone is sexually mature, a large number of sperm in the seminiferous tubules in its testis mature and are gradually discharged into the seminal vesicle. Generally, the semen volume of a male peak seminal vesicle is 1.5-2.0μl (microliter). There are an average of 7.5 million sperm per microliter of semen. The quantity and vitality of sperm directly affect the genetic traits and development of bee colony offspring. Therefore, it is equally important to choose a population with high-quality genetic offspring as the father and a high-quality queen bee.

Worker bee:

The main tasks of worker bees are to collect food, feed larvae, secrete wax to make spleen, secrete pulp to clean nests, protect nests and attack enemies. All kinds of work in the hive are basically done by worker bees; Worker bees, like queen bees, are all developed from fertilized eggs. Nursed worker bees don't take care of them like queen bee larvae. They were fed only royal jelly in the first three days after hatching, and only honey powder mixed feed from the fourth day. Because the nutrition of this feed is not as high as that of royal jelly, and it lacks biological hormones to promote ovarian development. Therefore, the development of reproductive organs of worker bees was inhibited until they emerged into adult bees, and there were only a few ovarian tubes in the ovaries, which lost their normal reproductive function. So, they are immature females,

The life span of worker bees is generally 30 to 60 days. In the northern wintering period, worker bees are not very active, and overwintering bees that do not take part in feeding larvae can live for five to six months. The number of worker bees in each colony depends on the prosperity of the colony.

(Reference:

China Bee Therapy Network)

Edit this paragraph about other bees.

A bee needs 33,333 working hours to brew and spit out one kilogram of honey and suck 3,333 stamens.

In order to brew 500 grams of honey, worker bees need to fly back and forth 37,000 times to find and collect nectar and bring it back to the hive.

Bees' wings can flap 200 to 400 times per second.

The maximum speed of bees flying is 40 kilometers per hour. When it comes home with a full load, it flies at a speed of 20 to 24 kilometers per hour.

A hive has an average of 50,000 hives and 35,000 busy bees.

A bee's furry body can stick to 50,000 to 750,000 grains of pollen.

A spoonful of honey can provide enough energy for bees to fly around the earth.

The life span of worker bees is 38 days in summer and 6 months in winter.

The life span of a queen bee is usually four to five years.

With 5 compound eyes and 3 monocular eyes, the viewing angle of bees can almost reach 360 degrees.

1, dance language;

2. Bees will also change the index in time, and rely on the polarized light beam reflected from the sky to determine the orientation and return to the nest in time;

3. Make use of the constant vibration of wings to make "buzzing" sounds with different frequencies, so as to supplement the deficiency of "dance language" and strengthen the expression ability of emotions.

The dance language of insects plays an important role in the process of transmitting information, especially in bees and butterflies.

In the social life of bees, worker bees shoulder the heavy tasks of building nests, collecting pollen, making honey and raising children. Before a large number of worker bees leave the nest to collect honey, they will send "reconnaissance bees" to find the source of honey. Reconnaissance bees report to the hive when they find the honey source within 0/00 meters from the hive/kloc-. In addition to leaving tracking information, they will alternately turn left or right in small circles on the hive and crawl in a "round dance" way. If the honey source is 0/00 meters away from the hive/kloc-,the scout bees will change their dancing posture and take the shape of ∞, so it is also called "figure-eight dance" or "wagging tail dance". If all the crawling routes are connected, the longer the straight crawling time, the farther away from the honey source. The straight-line crawling lasts for 1 s, indicating that it is about 500 meters away from the honey source; Two seconds, about l000 meters. When reconnaissance bees do this kind of performance, the worker bees around them will first extend their tentacles to hit the dancer's body, which may be because they get information from it. The tail wagging dance of the reconnaissance bee can not only show the distance from the honey source, but also point out the direction. The direction of honey source is expressed by the angle formed by the central axis in the beehive when dancing "tail wagging dance". If it rains, it will be a bit chaotic to use the method of dance positioning. Bees will also change the index in time, rely on the polarized light beam reflected from the sky to determine the orientation and return to the nest in time. People may ask, how do other partners understand the various dance moves performed by worker bees in the dark hive? It turns out that they get information by changing "dance language" into "contact language" when they touch the body of worker bees with trembling tentacles on their heads. This mode of communication sometimes fails. To this end, they also need to use the constant vibration of their wings to make "buzzing" sounds with different frequencies to supplement the lack of "dance language" and strengthen their emotional expression ability.

The main natural enemy of bees is wasps.