| Uniramia |
| --Centipedes |
| --Hexapoda 1 (insects) |
| --Hexapoda 2 (insects) |
| --Insect orders |
| ----Lepidoptera (butterflies, moths) |
| ----Ephemeroptera (mayflies) |
| ----Hemiptera (bugs, cicadas) |
| ----Hymenoptera (bees, ants, wasps & saw flies) |
| ------Bumblebees |
| ----Coleoptera (beetles) |
| ----Dictyoptera (mantids, cockroaches) |
| ----Diptera (true flies) |
| ----Neuroptera (lacewings, ant lions) |
| ----Orthoptera (crickets, locusts) |
| ----Thysanura (bristletails, silver fish) |
| ----Strepsiptera (stylops) |
| ----Thysanoptera (thrips) |
| ----Odonata (dragonflies, damselflies) |
| ----Trichoptera (caddis flies) |
| ----Siphonaptera (fleas) |
| ----Isoptera (termites) |
| ----Phasmida (stick & leaf insects) |
| ----Dermaptera (earwigs) |
| ----Anoplura/Sipunculata (sucking lice) |
| ----Mallophaga (biting lice, bird lice) |
| ----Psocoptera (book lice) |
| ----Mecoptera (scorpion flies) |
| ----Collembola (springtail) |
| ----Embioptera (web spinners) |
| ----Plecoptera (stone flies) |
| ----Diplura (bristletails) |
| ----Protura |
| ----Zoraptera |
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| Fast
facts about Hymenoptera |
Two pairs of
membranous wings, the front pair usually larger.
Forewing and hind wing
attached by a row of minute
hooks on the front
edge of the hind wing.
Bees, ants and wasps have chemoreceptors for taste and smell on their antennae as well as on their mouthparts.
Split into two groups; Symphyta (saw flies) which
have no "waist", and Apocrita (bees, wasps and ants) which have a distinct
narrow waist.
All species of ant, some species of bee and wasps are social
insects.
Over 198 000 species worldwide, over 40 000 in Europe, over 6 500 in British Isles.
The "industrious ant" is a myth. It is normal for 50% or more of the adult ants in an ant nest to be idle at any given time. And male ants contribute virtually nothing to the nest.
Click for the bumblebee pages.
Click here for mason bees, leaf cutter bees, carpenter bees and other bees .
Apart from the termites all the social insects are in the Hymenoptera order. |
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The Hymenoptera contain most of the social insects, the only social insects not in this order are the termites. Social insects have three major traits:
1.Individuals of the same species co-operate in caring for the young.
2. There is a reproductive division of labour.
3. There is an overlap of at least 2 generations in life stages capable of contributing to colony behaviour.
This page contains information about honey bees.
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above the head of a honey bee showing the tongue, and a honey bee grub. |
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Click here for bumblebees
Mason, carpenter, leafcutter and other bees
Wasps
Sawflies
Bees, flowers, nectar and honey.
Bees, whether social or solitary eat pollen and nectar all their lives. So bees need flowers, and many flowers cannot breed without the pollinating ability of bees. Plants reward their pollinators with nectar - it has no other use. Most bees carry the nectar in their stomach and regurgitate it in the nest or hive (bumblebee honeystomach). Some species store the nectar, which with the evaporation of some water and the addition of enzymes from the bee's stomach, becomes what we know as honey. Pollen is carried home either in pollen baskets on the bee's hind pair of legs (see below), or on thick hairs on the undersides of the abdomen.
Above is the honeybee body which has the typical bee shape. There are around 20 000 species of bee world wide. Recently a 100 million year old bee was found fossilised in amber. Preliminary studies of this bee confirm the belief that bee are descended from wasps.
The Apis mellifera (honeybee) genome has been published recently. It is the fourth insect to have its genome sequenced, the others are the mosquito, fruit fly and the silk moth. The colour of honeybees varies according to the species, but is usually brown and covered in brown/gray hairs. The honeybee is not nearly as hairy as the bumblebee. The body of the queen is similar to that of the workers, but she is a little larger.
There are around 60 000 - 70 000 bees in the average hive. The queen and workers (all female), and drones (males) are produced when needed. Usually just a few hundred drones are produced at a time.
One or more drones fertilises the queen during the nuptial flight. She will store enough sperm from this mating in her spermatheca to last her lifetime. The queen can lay around 2000 eggs per day, and can live for five years, so can lay over one million eggs in her lifetime. |
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The eggs hatch into maggot-like grubs (see right above) and are fed by the workers. The workers gather pollen and nectar from flowers. Honey bees, like bumblebees get all their food from flowers. The honeybee worker's tongue is covered in tiny hairs and is long and flexible, so is good for sucking nectar from flowers (see above right).
The nectar is carried back to the hive in the stomach of the bee, then it stored and becomes honey as the water in the nectar evaporates and the sugar is more concentrated. Pollen is carried back to the hive in pollen baskets in the bee's hindmost legs, (see right).
Honey bees have the typical hexagonally faceted compound eyes of insects, each eye has around 6300 ommatidia (facets).
Differences between bumblebees and honey bees.
There are some very important differences between the bumblebee life cycle
and the honeybee life cycle. There is no mouth-to-mouth exchange of food
between adult bumblebees, nor do adults groom each other or the queen as is
seen in honeybees. As yet no equivalent to the honeybee "queen substance" has
been found; in honeybee hives workers licking the queen and each other pass the
"queen substance" throughout the hive, and this pheromonal control enables the
queen to maintain dominance. Bumblebee queens appear to maintain dominance
purely by aggressive behaviour.
With bumblebees the colony is
started anew each year with only the new queens surviving the winter. Whereas
the honeybee hive continues year after year, even though there may have been a
change of queens during the summer. During the cold winter months the honey bee
workers cluster around the queen deep in the hive to maintain a high enough
temperature to survive, they also feed on their store of honey. So when the
weather warms enough for them to forage there are already a large number of
workers. Honeybee queens never forage, they live their lives inside the hive
only emerging to found a new colony when they swarm with a full compliment of
workers. Bumblebees in temperate climates never swarm, however there are a few
tropical species that initiate new colonies by swarming.
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"Queen substance" is produced by glands in the queen's mandibles (jaw). As long as the queen is healthy this queen substance prevents the development of the workers' ovaries. Once the queen is old or dies the workers ovaries develop and they feed some larva enough royal jelly to produce new queens.
Queen substance is passed throughout the hive like all the other contact pheromones by the bees licking, grooming and feeding each other.
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Royal jelly is inappropriately named. Most royal jelly production in a hive is fed to ordinary female worker honeybees. It is a mixture of two liquids produced in the head glands of nurse worker bees - the hypopharyngeal and mandibular glands. Larvae that are destined to be workers are fed for two days on royal jelly. Larva that are destined to be queens are fed all their larval lives on royal jelly. Royal jelly is rich in amino acids, vitamins and sugars.
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When a honeybee stings a mammal the bee dies because its sting stays in the mammal's skin and pulls out the poison sac and some of the abdominal contents. This is because the sting is barbed at the end, and mammal skin is stretchy. If the bee were to sting another insect it could easily pull out its sting as the insect is covered with brittle chitin. The muscles attached to the poison sac continue to pump even though they are no longer attached to the bee, so it is important to scrape off or pull out the sting as quickly as possible. |
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