For at least 4,000 years honeybees have been kept for their honey and for beeswax, a substance used to make candles, ointments, and many other products. Honeybees and bumblebees are the best-known types of bees, but there are more than 20,000 bee species in all. They live all over the world except in Antarctica. Bees are related to wasps, hornets, and ants. Structure and formMost bees have short, thick bodies covered with hair. Like all insects, they have six legs and three body parts: head, thorax, and abdomen. The thorax has three segments. Each segment has a pair of legs; each of the last two segments has a pair of wings attached to it. When in flight, a bee makes a humming sound because of the rapid movement of its wings. Normally, most bees fly at about 12 1/2 miles (20 kilometers) per hour, but they can go much faster. Bees can see color, pattern, and movement with the help of three eyes on top of their heads and two huge, helmetlike compound eyes. Bees see all colors that humans do except red; in addition, bees see ultraviolet, which humans cannot. On the lower part of their heads, bees have biting jaws (mandibles) and a mouth-tongue (proboscis), which they use for sucking and lapping nectar from flowers. The female bee has a device called an ovipositor located at the end of its abdomen. The female bee uses the ovipostor to lay its eggs. It also uses the ovipositor as a weapon to inflict a painful sting. Most bees can sting many times, but a honeybee worker has a tiny, hook-shaped barb that is caught inside the victim. This bee cannot fly away without tearing out its ovipositor and dying. Male bees cannot sting. SizeThe largest bees, which include some of the leafcutter and carpenter varieties, may be up to about 1 1/2 inches (4 centimeters) long. Bumblebees are larger than most bees—about 1 inch (2.5 centimeters) long. Honeybees range from about 1/2 to 1 inch (1.3 to 2.5 centimeters), depending on the species. Some of the small leafcutter bees are only 1/3 inch (1 centimeter) long, and sweat bees are 3/10 inch (0.7 centimeter) long. The tiniest species, the mosquito bees, may be only 7/100 inch (0.2 centimeter) long. ColorMost bees have black bodies, many with yellow or brown markings. Others have yellow, red, brown, and metallic green or blue bodies, some with brilliant metallic red or purple markings. Honeybees are dark brown with dark yellow stripes. Bumblebees are usually black with wide yellow or orange bands. BehaviorNestingDifferent species of bees nest in different ways. There are three types of bees based on the way they nest: social bees, solitary bees, and parasitic bees. Social bees are members of colonies in which they cooperate with others to build the nest and feed and protect the young. They include honeybees, bumblebees, and tropical stingless bees. Social bees are divided into three castes, or classes. Males are called drones. There are two types of females: queens and workers. Both queens and workers lay eggs, but only the queens' are fertilized with the drones' sperm and develop into females. Eggs of the workers develop into males. Queens are not hatched as queens; they become queens when they are fed royal jelly, a substance produced by the salivary glands of the workers. Most bees are solitary bees. They care only for themselves and their immediate family. Each female makes its own nest and cares for its offspring. Parasitic bees, or guest bees, do not feed or care for their offspring. They sneak into the nests of other bee species to lay their eggs. They then let the workers of the other nests care for their offspring. Feeding and pollinationBees get all of their food from flowers. The food consists of nectar and pollen. Nectar is a sweet liquid produced by the flower's glands. The bees use their long proboscises to drink the nectar. Some bees, especially the honeybee, modify and store their nectar as honey. Flowers also produce pollen in the form of tiny grains that cling to the bees' bodies. As bees go from one blossom to another, some of the pollen is transferred to the flowers of other plants of the same species. In this way, bees help pollinate, or fertilize, the flowers. This permits the plants to produce their fruits and seeds. The bees' greatest value by far is as pollinators of plants. |