Body Sections
Body Sections
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One of the defining characteristics of the bee is its hairy body.
Bees Are Hairy
Bees have hair all over their bodies, even on their eyes. Bee hairs are branched, somewhat like the ribs or barbules of a feather, making them extremely good at capturing pollen. When bees land on flowers, their hairs allow them to carry that pollen to other flowers of the same species and pollinate them.
Honey bees also eat pollen. Having a passive system to collect pollen while foraging for nectar is a great way to complete two functions at once.
Bees have hair all over their bodies, even on their eyes.
The Bee Head
The head of a honey bee contains the brain, eyes, ocelli, antennae, and mouth parts, including the proboscis and several glands. Among these glands are the mandibular and hypopharyngeal glands, which in workers of a certain age produce royal and worker jelly. The mandibular glands in queens produce the pheromones called “queen substance” that keep the hive in order and allow the workers to identify her.
1. Antennae
Antennae are sensory organs on the head of the bee.
The antennae are covered with tiny hairs and pits that enable bees to sense odors, tastes, and environmental characteristics (like air movements and temperature) and to communicate with one another.
2. Mouth Parts
The mouth parts of a honey bee consist mainly of paired mandibles and a proboscis, or tongue. The honey bee uses these to groom itself and other bees, suck nectar from flowers, remove moisture from nectar to produce honey, and manipulate wax to form comb.
Worker bees in the house bee stage of life also use their mouths to form wax removed from their wax glands into honeycomb.
3. Proboscis
The Proboscis is the tongue of the bee, used like a straw to suck up fluids such as nectar, honey, or water.
4. Eyes
Honey bees have two compound eyes made up of thousands of smaller tubes called ommatidia. Each of the ommatidia projects an image through a lens, or facet, on the outside of the tube onto visual cells at the bottom of the tube. These images are thought to be combined in the bee's brain to create a single mosaic image rather than thousands of individual images.
Bees are attracted to motion and can see ultraviolet light, which many flowers exploit to their advantage by focusing bees' attention on their nectaries through the ultraviolet spectrum.
5. Ocelli
Ocelli are three little photoreceptors, or eyes, on top of a bee's head, each of which has a single lens. ("Ocellus," the singular form, literally means "little eye.")
While scientists are still trying to fully understand how ocelli function and how a bee uses the information that they provide, these photoreceptors do monitor light intensity and seem to be important for flight stability and orienting geographically.
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Ocelli are three small photoreceptors on top of the bee's head.
The Bee Thorax
The middle section of a honey bee is called the thorax and serves as the anchor point for three pairs of legs and two pairs of wings. Much of the inside of the thorax is taken up by muscles used to power flight and ambulation.
1. Wings
The honey bee has four wings,though sometimes it's hard to tell it has more than two. The reason is that during flight the smaller hindwing on each side attaches to the larger forewing with wing hooks, called humili. This not only makes each pair of wings appear and act as one big wing, but it also means increased flight efficiency. When the bee lands, the wings unhook and can be folded back, allowing bees to fit into deep flowers and pack into hives more efficiently.
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2. Legs
Bees use their legs for walking, landing, and clinging. Their legs also have many modifications that allow them to comb pollen off their bodies, carry pollen to the hive, clean their antennae, and move wax scales.
3. Claws
Bee claws are what we would call the feet of the bee. They are used for walking and clinging onto objects, such as flowers and combs in the hive.
Bees can flex their claws when they need to cling onto something and relax them when they need to walk on flat surfaces.
4. Pollen Combs
In bee anatomy, pollen combs are hairy sections on the inside of a bee's hind legs.
When a bee goes into a flower, its hairy body becomes covered with pollen. With its forelegs and midlegs, the bee scrapes off the pollen and transfers it to the pollen combs. The bee then rubs its hind legs together, raking the pollen off of each and onto the pollen press of the opposite leg.
5. Pollen Basket
The pollen basket is a broad, concave section on the outside of a honey bee worker's hind legs that serves as a relatively secure receptacle for pollen collected during foraging flights, allowing it to be brought back to the hive for later consumption.
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The bee scrapes off pollen from all over its body with its forelegs, gradually moving it onto a special place on its hind legs called the pollen rake. The bee then compresses the pollen into dense nuggets using a joint called the pollen press, after which the pollen is stored in the pollen basket until it is removed and placed in cells in the brood nest of the hive.
6. Pollen Rake
The pollen rake is a rakelike structure around the pollen press on a bee's hind leg. The bee uses it to scrape pollen off of the opposite rear leg's pollen comb.
7. Pollen Press
The pollen press is a specially adapted joint on a bee's hind leg that the bee uses to compress pollen into a tight mass for more efficient storage during flight.
Using the press, the bee squeezes the pollen into dense nuggets and packs these into its pollen basket.
The Bee Abdomen
The abdomen of a honey bee is its hindmost section and houses most of the bee’s internal organs, such as scent and wax glands, the digestive system, reproductive organs, the heart, and the sting.
The abdomen is composed of overlapping sections of exoskeleton that can slide and expand to facilitate breathing and can change the shape of the bee for balance and aerodynamics, as well as stinging. Technically, the abdomen has nine sections, but from the outside there appear to be six.
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1. Sting
The honey bee sting, commonly called the "stinger," is a complex device used by female honey bees to defend the nest. (The scientific name for the sting is ovipositor.)
The sting has several parts, including two extremely sharp barbed lancets, a venom sac, and glands containing alarm substance.
The stings of queen honey bees are not barbed nearly as much and can be used repeatedly without damaging the queen's body. They are used almost exclusively to kill rival queens. Since the ovipositor is adapted from the female sex organ, drones have none and cannot sting.
2. Spiracles
Spiracles are small openings on the sides of all insects, including bees, that allow air to enter the tracheae and ultimately feed oxygen directly to the tissues of the insects.
Bees don't have lungs. Instead, they move oxygen through their respiratory system by expanding and contracting their abdomens. Spiracles can be opened and closed at will through muscular contraction, either to prevent moisture loss in the body or to prevent water from entering the trachea.
Lesson List
- Βιολογία μελισσών Duration:
- Ταξινόμηση και κύκλος ζωής Duration:
- Life Cycle Duration:
- The Eight Life Cycle Stages Duration:
- 1.3 Το σώμα της μέλισσας Duration:
- Body Sections Duration:
- Honey Bee Roles Duration:
- The Queen Duration:
- Drones Duration:
- Worker Bees Duration:
- Roles of the Worker Duration:
- 1.5 Check Your Learning Duration:
- link Duration:
Teachers Info
Bee doctor
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