It’s summer, and there you are, drinking a refreshing beverage in the great outdoors when suddenly you hear a buzz, see a flash of yellow and black… and yaow! … you’ve been stung.
Was it a bee? Or a wasp? Maybe a hornet, or yellowjacket?
If you didn’t get a good look at the tiny assassin, you could always -- you know, carefully -- try following it home, because it turns out you can learn a lot about a winged stinger by looking at it’s nest.
But before we get into why that is, I want to talk a little bit about wasps versus bees.
First up, you should know that yellowjackets and hornets are basically types of wasps. They’re all members of the Vespidae family, which includes a lot of solitary species, but also social nest-building types.
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Because pollen is nutritious and full of protein, those wasps realized they were on to something. Eventually some of them gave up hunting entirely and switched to foraging, turning in their chewing mouthparts for nectar-sipping ones, and becoming the first bees.
Many of the anatomical and behavioral differences between bees and wasps we see today reflect these food choices.
In general, bees are less aggressive, more rotund in shape, and covered in a fuzz that helps them collect pollen. Wasps, on the other hand, are shiny, smooth, and slender-waisted, with big mandibles and elongated bodies streamlined for better hunting.
A warrior female wasp can sting sting you over and over with her modified ovipositor stinger, whereas a bee only gets one shot to nail you before her stinger gets stuck, and basically rips her guts out as she flies away.
Okay, so let’s talk about how all that stuff plays out into terms of building
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Honeybees couldn’t make their hives out of paper even if they wanted to, because they lack the proper mouthparts, but that’s cool because they have way better building materials on hand.
They secrete a durable, waxy substance from their abdomens and with it construct the hexagonal honeycomb cells they use to store honey and pollen, and raise larvae.
These hives are sturdy and perennial. They’re built to last for years, and even when one becomes overcrowded and half the colony leaves to start a new hive, the rest remain, many of them overwintering in the hive.
And honey bee colonies are huge -- supporting tens of thousands of members, in part because it takes that many to accumulate the estimated 60 pounds of honey they’ll need to get through the winter.
Most wasp colonies tend to be a lot smaller, and some paper wasp nests hold fewer than 100 individuals. Aside from the queen, wasps may only live a few weeks, and as predators they don’t really store food for any real length of time.
Basically their nests need only provide shelter for a season’s worth of offspring, at least in temperate areas, and they don’t need to and often can’t build the kind of hive that keeps bees safe and well-fed throughout the
Chemical allomones are assumed to play a role in how the invading females treat the host nest queen. B. norvegicus can either enter the nest undetected and can then cohabitate with the host queen or, if attacked by the host workers, B. norvegicus can take a more aggressive approach by retaliating against the host bees and “mauling” them with their stingers.
What are honeybees? Honeybees are social hairy creatures that are a member of the apidae family and are oval shaped. They measure around 15 mm in length and the majority of their bodies is black with yellow or brown stripes. The bright stripes serve as a warning to their predators that indicates that they can sting. Living in hollowed out trees or sometimes a wall of a house, they construct hives which store honey. The male
Bee's need a queen in order to survive. While there are thousands of worker bees per successful hive, the queen, lays the eggs and the thousands of bees worship her; August teaches Lily, “'...they all depend on her to keep [the system] going…
Apis mellifera scutellata is cross between a European bee and an African bee, also known as the “Africanized Honey Bee”, or even the “Killer Bee.” It is very similar in appearance to a typical European bee, but is slightly smaller in size, though microscopically so. The differences between the European bee and the Africanized Honey Bee are exemplified primarily through behavior and biological patterns. Africanized Honey Bees are much more prolific than European bees, reproducing up to six times more yearly than European bees. The main difference between the Africanized Honey Bee and a European bee is that Africanized bees are far more aggressive than European bees, and are more protective of their nests. The willingness of Africanized bees to attack unprovoked has earned them the nickname “Killer Bees.”
They are renown for their collection of nectar and production of honey. Production of honey is possible because of nectar collected from flora. Honey bees store the nectar into a seperate stomach from their regular food stomach. Then they fly back to their hive where they transfer their load to
Wasps have a more fervent and wrathful connotation than bees do, so they might have worked better in this
Bees are kept for several reasons. Honey bees are mostly kept for commercial use or just a hobby. These bees are called Apis mellifera, or European honey bees. These bees have a presence all over the world. They produce honey as well as pollinate crops. The most popular subspecies are Italian bees, A. mellifera ligustica. These bees are usually orange or bright yellow and can amass a sizeable population in the spring. Their way of feeding is to rob other colonies of their honey. Another popular bee is named Apis mellifera scutellata, or the killer bee as most people know it, it is also known as the Africanized bees.
EHB and AHB are physically distinct from one another, though not to the untrained eye. EHB worker bees are about 10 percent larger than the AHB subspecies and therefore weigh about 33 percent more (Winston 22). This difference in size in weight can be attributed to the degree to which AHB develop more rapidly than the EHB race. The time spent in each of the four stages of development (egg, larva, pupa, and adult) is shorter in AHB colonies, resulting in the more rapid production of slightly smaller workers. The lifespan of AHB is also shorter. During the summer, EHB workers live 20 to 35 days while studies show that AHB workers live only 12 to 18 days. The same is true in winter seasons; a Polish study shows EHB workers have an average lifespan of 140 days and AHB workers live 90 days. Hence, EHB live longer lives at a slow and steady pace whereas AHB “go full out during their short lives, accomplish more work in less time, but die younger” (Winston 24).
The hive, the honeybees' home, is made up of hundreds of 4.6 millimeter combs. These combs cover the walls of the hive making perfectly arraigned storage for incoming larvae and honey. Honeybees first must gather nectar to make the wax, they use their long tongues to collect the nectar from the desired flower. The honey bees will travel dozens of miles to collect more nectar. When the honeybee "drinks" the nectar, the liquid will be stored in its honey stomach. Honeybees have two stomachs, one for food and one for making
Only 4 of these species are honeybees, and 250 species are bumblebees (IUCN, 2013) with up to 90% of the remaining species classified as solitary bees (Kindersley, 2016). Honeybees make honey, its their primary food, feeding up to 10,000 strong colonies (Benjamin, 2015). Bumblebees don’t make honey but they are important pollinators,their hairier coats can attract more pollen and they can fly at colder temperatures than honeybees most bumblebees are wild (Benjamin,2015),and are not often used commercially unlike honey bees.
There are three types of bees in a hive; namely, the queen, worker bees and drones. There is only one queen per hive and her role is to produce more bees (4). This is done by mating with the male bees. After mating, the queen can lay up to 2,000 eggs per day (4). Drones are male bees and their role is to mate with the queen. Drones spend a considerable amount of time inside the hive; in addition, during early winter
Habitat loss and the demand for agriculture throughout the world lead to the perishing food resources for the bees. Adult honeybees require mainly carbs and sugars that are found in nectar to provide energy. Their larvae need the essential minerals and proteins so they can grow. Honey bees are all different in that the main consumers are young workers, and nurse bees who can digest the pollen and produce the food that they feed their larvae known as brood. Amino acids are also important to the bees, but some pollen doesn't have the right amount of amino acids.
A bee is an insect that lives in every part of the world except the North and South Poles. Bees are one of the most useful of all insects. There are 20,000 species of bees in the world (154, B: Bees). Bees get their food from flowers through pollen and nectar. They collect tiny grains of pollen and nectar from flower blossoms. Sticky nectar gets attached to the tiny hairs that cover their bodies and is distributed when bees travel from flower collecting nectar (201, B: Bees). Bees make their honey from nectar and use both honey and pollen as food. When bees are collecting nectar for food, they spread pollen from flower to flower. The process of pollination allows plants to reproduce as well as feeds the bees. Bees have become completely dependent on flowers for food. Flowers, in turn, rely heavily on bees to
A bee is basically a vegan wasp that uses pollen as a source of protein.
Bees have existed for about 100 million years, and they have played an important role in the pollination of plants. A long time ago, pollination was crucial to the balance of the food chain. Without it there would have been no food for the herbivores and they would have become extinct; so no food for the meat eaters. They have been doing their job for millions of years, but recently scientists have observed problems within the colonies which could have negative effects with in our ecosystem.