Can you tell me something about bees?

Why do bees sting people and die? Many people are afraid of bee stings, but most of them just have to do it. Because bees will "die heroically" soon after stinging people. Why do bees die after stinging? Because they are pierced by needles at the end of the abdomen. This stinging needle consists of a back needle and two abdominal needles, followed by poisonous glands and internal organs. There are several small barbs on the pump end of abdominal puncture needle. When the puncture needle sticks to a person's skin, it often takes a lot of effort to pull out the puncture needle because the small barb is tightly hooked on the person's skin. But when the bee pushes hard, not only the needle will be pulled out, but also a part of the internal organs will be pulled out. In this way, bees will definitely die. How do bees know where there is nectar? Bees live in hives. Every time the flowers bloom, they will fly around to collect honey. How do bees know where there is nectar? It turns out that there is a kind of bee in the bee colony called worker bee, which is responsible for reconnaissance and honey collection. When the flowers are in full bloom, some worker bees go out to look for honey sources. When they find it, they suck a little nectar and fly back with a little pollen. When they get home, they tell their companions where the honey source is by crawling or dancing in various ways. When other worker bees in the hive get the news, they will look for honey sources in the direction of exploring worker bees. What are bees doing flying around among the flowers? In spring, many flowers are in full bloom and swarms of bees are flying around among the flowers. They stopped on this flower for a while and then got into that flower. What are they doing? Bees enter flowers, collect pollen and suck nectar. Bees store the sucked nectar in the honey sac of their bodies, and then spit it out when they get home, and then other bees can make honey. The pollen collected by bees is put in the pollen basket on the hind legs. Because bees have a lot of fluff, when they suck nectar and collect pollen from flowers, they will stick the pollen of flowers to their bodies. When it flies to another flower, it carries pollen to another flower. In this way, bees have become "voluntary pollinators" of many plants. Honeycomb is a crop that stores liquid substances such as nectar in bees. Between the esophagus and the forestomach. The nectar or water collected by worker bees is stored in honey bags and taken home. Honey juice or water can return to the mouth through the contraction of the honey sac. Honeycomb has great expansion and contraction, and its volume is usually about 14 ~ 18ul. After being filled with honey juice, it can expand to 55 ~ 60ul. Worker bees' hives are more developed than queen bees and drones. Bees refer to all flying social insects in the family Apidae, which feed on pollen and nectar and brew honey. Its cell deposition is also the only eukaryote with iron mineral deposition in cells. There are three kinds of bees in the bee colony: queen bee, worker bee and drone. There is a queen bee (there are two queens in some special cases), 1, 000 to 1, 500 worker bees, 500 to 1, 500 drones. Bees originated in Asia and Europe and were brought to America by British and Spanish. In order to get food, bees keep working, collecting honey during the day, making honey at night and pollinating fruit trees, which is an important medium for crop pollination. Bees 1: Overview Bees are the floorboard of HYMENOPTERA and Insecta. 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. Two: value bees feed entirely on flowers, including pollen and nectar, and sometimes they are 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. Three: Lifestyle There are three lifestyles of bees: 1 sociality. Male and female worker ants live in the same nest, but there are differences in morphology, physiology and division of labor. 2. unique. 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. 3 parasitic. Female bees don't build nests, but lay eggs in the host's nest. 4. Origin 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. Five: Systematic position In Insecta, bees belong to advanced evolutionary groups. 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. Bees rely on the sun to tell their directions. During the day, the direction of bee dance changes with time. Bees are located at three points: the hive, the honey collecting ground and the sun. The hive is the vertex of a triangle, and the vertex angle is determined by two lines: one is from the hive to the sun, and the other is a straight line from the hive to the honey gathering place. The angle between these two lines is called "sun angle", which is the "steering wheel" of bees. Bees fly half a small circle to the left and half a small circle to the right. The flight path is like an "8". But sometimes bees fly from top to bottom, and sometimes from bottom to top. The angle between the flying straight line and the vertical line on the ground is equal to the angle of the sun. It is from this angle that bees decide the location and direction of honey collection. If bees fly straight with their heads up when dancing the figure-eight dance, then the angle of the sun is zero, which means: "flying towards the sun is the direction of collecting honey." If bees fly head-down to the ground in the "8" dance, then the angle of the sun is 180, that is, "the place where they fly away from the sun is the place where honey is collected." If the left included angle between the flying straight line and the vertical line on the ground is 15 when the bees dance the figure of eight, it means: "Flying 60 to the left sun angle is the place to collect honey." Interestingly, bees in different places have different "dance languages". Bees in Austria can dance the eight-character dance, while bees in Italy can also dance the round dance and the curved sickle dance. If the weather is bad, the clouds are overcast, there is no sun, and there is no polarized light in the air, bees will lose their ability to tell the direction. Bees belong to Hymenoptera and Apiidae. Body length is 8-20 mm, tan or dark brown, with thick hair. The head is almost as wide as the chest. The antenna is knee-shaped, the compound eye is oval and hairy, the mouthparts are chewing and sucking, and the hind feet are powder-carrying feet. Two pairs of membrane wings; The front wing is big, the rear wing is small, and the front and rear wings are connected by wing hooks. The abdomen is nearly oval, with less body hair than the chest and claws at the end of the abdomen. Bees are completely metamorphosed and go 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 have a fertilized egg and develop it into a drone later. 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. 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. This can keep the temperature in the ball constant or change little, which is conducive to safe wintering. Living habits of bees

A swarm of bees usually consists of a queen bee, a large number of worker bees and a small number of drones. They have different forms and functions, cooperate with each other and depend on each other, just like a big family or even a country in human society. This paper introduces the relationship between queen bee, worker bee, drone and bee colony.

1, queen bee

The queen bee is the only female bee with fully developed reproductive organs. Developed from fertilized eggs of Wangtai. The queen bee's body is longer than that of worker bees (Italian bees) 1/4 (Chinese bees) to 1 times. The abdomen is long and conical, accounting for about 3/4 of the body length, and the wings are short, covering only half of the abdomen. Unlike worker bees, this kind of sting is only slightly barbed, and it is only used when fighting with the competing queen bee. Although the action seems to be slow and unhurried, it is very agile when necessary. The oviposition queen of Chinese bee (APIs cerana) is about 250 mg in length18 ~ 22 mm. The newborn queen bee of Italian bee (Italian bee) weighs 170 ~ 240mg, and the spawning queen bee is 20 ~ 25mm long and weighs 250 ~ 300mg. The function of the queen bee is to lay eggs. An excellent queen bee can lay about 1500 eggs every day and night during the spawning period. The quality and spawning ability of queen bees play a decisive role in the strength and genetic traits of bee colonies. Only by cultivating excellent and robust queen bees in production can the bee colony maintain strong colony potential and high production performance.

Generally, there is only one queen bee in a colony. If there is a blocked queen platform in the colony, bees will be grouped (naturally). When there are two queens, they will fight with each other until there is one left. But in the natural alternation, the old queen bee may live in the same nest with the new queen bee for a period of time.

There must be no queen bee in the hive. Guardian bees know whether there is a queen bee in this group by transmitting the queen bee substance secreted by the queen bee in the hive. If the queen bee is not here, after a few minutes, the working order in the bee colony will be seriously affected and the worker bees will be anxious. At this time, as long as a queen bee is lured into the colony that has lost the queen bee, or a mature queen bee platform is added, the restless situation of the colony will soon change and resume normal activities.

The queen bee is specially cared for by worker bees all her life, especially during the spawning period. Usually, there is always a guard bee surrounded by young worker bees. Guard worker bees keep touching the queen bee with their tentacles, licking it and removing its excrement. Worker bees feed the queen bee with royal jelly. Without worker bees, the queen bee's oviposition function cannot be realized. After the queen bee doesn't lay eggs, the worker bees don't care much. Sometimes, in order to force the queen bee to stop laying eggs (for example, when the bees are ready to group), the worker bees no longer feed the queen bee with royal jelly, and then the queen bee will go to the honey storage nest to get honey herself. The queen bee has lost the ability to keep bees (including eggs, larvae and pupae), so the worker bee has assumed the function of keeping bees.

Virgin queen bees usually don't lay eggs. If queens over the age of 20 have not mated, they will give birth to unfertilized eggs, so the overdue unmated virgin queens should be eliminated.

The life span of a successfully mated queen bee is 3-5 years, and the longest is 8-9 years. Usually, the ability of queen bees to lay eggs for more than 2 years will gradually decline. Queen bees that have been used for more than 2 years are no longer used in production, and queen bees that are aging, disabled and have decreased egg production are replaced at any time.

2. worker bees

Worker bees are female individuals developed from fertilized eggs in worker bees' houses, but their reproductive organs are not fully developed and their ovaries are small. Except that there is no queen bee in the colony, they generally don't lay eggs. Worker bees are the smallest members of the bee colony, but the number accounts for the vast majority of the bee colony. Worker bees of APIs cerana cerana weigh about 80 mg at birth and have a body length of10 ~13 mm. Worker bees of APIs mellifera weigh about 1 10mg at birth, have a body length of 12 ~ 14mm, a chest width of 4.4 mm, and weigh about 1kg per 10000 bees. Each worker bee crawls on the spleen of the nest, occupying the area of three nests, and there are about 2500 worker bees crawling on both sides of a standard nest frame. Worker bees are small and dark brown, with thick grayish yellow hair on their heads, chests and backs. The head is slightly triangular, with a pair of compound eyes, three monocular eyes, a pair of tentacles and bent knees; Developed mouthparts, suitable for chewing and sucking; There are three pairs of feet, and there are pollen collecting structures in femoral joint, tibial joint and tarsal joint. The abdomen is conical, the back is yellowish brown, there are black links at the node 1 ~ 4, and the end is sharp, with poisonous glands and barbed needles; There are four pairs of wax plates in the abdomen, which contain wax glands and secrete wax. They have all organs, including pollen baskets, smelly glands and so on. They perform all kinds of tasks needed for the development of the bee colony, so the worker bees are responsible for all the work inside and outside the whole bee colony. Its function changes with age. This phenomenon is called the phenomenon of different ages and different jobs. The main duty of worker bees under 3 days old is to clean the nest room for the queen bee to lay eggs; In the next two weeks, with the development of tongue gland (vegetative gland, royal jelly gland), wax gland, poison gland and other glands, they secrete royal jelly to feed the queen bee, and at the same time get royal jelly (queen bee substance, which belongs to pheromone) from the queen bee to feed the larvae, prepare larval pulp (royal jelly with honey and bee bread) to feed the big larvae, adjust the temperature and humidity in the nest, make the air in the box circulate, secrete beeswax and repair the nest spleen. At the peak of bee colony reproduction, especially before bee distribution, worker bees also feed drones, with the change of position and the increase of age; They move from the center of the hive to the outside. About 3 weeks old worker bees began to work outside the nest, collecting nectar, pollen, water, propolis and so on. , or reconnaissance honey source. However, their functions can be changed according to the changes of environmental conditions and the needs of bee colonies, and they have great plasticity.

The life span of bees is 4 ~ 6 weeks in summer and 3 ~ 6 months in winter, which is closely related to the work intensity and population potential. In the production season, worker bees have the shortest life span. In winter and early spring, the worker bees that have wintered in the bee colony gradually die. At the end of spring, when the number of new worker bees exceeds the number of old worker bees, the trend of bee colony begins to increase. In the breeding season, the number of worker bees in a strong bee colony can reach 50 thousand to 60 thousand.

Step 3 hum

Drones are developed from unfertilized eggs in the drone house, and they are male individuals of the bee colony. Its physique is stout, its head and tail are almost round, its compound eyes are big and prominent, its wings are wide and its feet are stout, so it can quickly find and catch up with the queen bee. The drone weight of Chinese bee 150 mg, body length 12 ~ 15 mm, the drone weight of Italian bee (220 mg, body length 15 ~ 17 mm), the variety and physique of the drone, and the quantity and fluidity of its semen are the genetic characters of the new bee colony's offspring.

Drones have no needles, poison sacs, pollen baskets and wax secretion organs, but they have short tongues, feed from the honey storage room in the nest, and have no work skills, so they mate with the queen bee full-time. Most UAVs start flying within 7 ~ 10 days, and sexual maturity is about 8 ~ 14 days. 12 ~ 20 days is the mating age. Uavs usually fly to mate at 1 ~ 5 o'clock on a sunny afternoon. After mating with the queen bee, they die quickly because their reproductive organs remain in the abdomen of the female bee.

Male bees eat a lot, and the larval stage is 1 ~ 2 times that of worker bees; Adult bees consume more feed and usually feed on honey spleen. During the breeding season, worker bees will be fed with nutritious feed such as pollen and bee bread.

Drones can live for several months, but most of them die young. There is a shortage of honey sources in autumn in the north. Before the arrival of summer in the south, worker bees will not let the drones eat the honey stored in the bees that have mated with the queen bee, and will be expelled from the nest by the worker bees. Because the drone can't eat or defend itself, it died of hunger and cold soon after leaving the group. Those who don't have a queen bee or a queen bee continue to tolerate drones and feed them in the season when nectar is gradually scarce. Whether the drone is expelled from the hive is a signal that the honey source and feed in the hive are sufficient. The first batch of drones in early spring are precious and can be temporarily kept to ensure the smooth mating of queen bees.

4. The relationship between bees

Although bees live in groups, there is no collusion between bees. In order to resist the invasion of exotic bees and other insects and animals, bees have formed the ability to guard their hives. Spines are their main self-defense organs.

Bees in the hive can recognize other bees through their sensitive sense of smell. Bees guarding the nest door are not allowed to enter the nest. If other bees steal honey from the nest, the guard bees will fight immediately until the newcomers are expelled or die. Outside the hive, such as in flowers or drinking places, different bees are not hostile and interfere with each other.

The queen bee who flies out of mating will be immediately surrounded by worker bees and assassinated if she strays into another group. Worker bees will not harm drones that fall into the wrong group. This may be the biological characteristics of bee colony to avoid inbreeding for better survival of race. Bees, broadly speaking, refer to HYMENOPTERA Apiidae insects, including all kinds that can make honey; In a narrow sense, it refers to four kinds of bees, especially Italian bees (also known as western bees or European bees). The other three species are small bees, big bees and oriental bees, which are only found in Asia and are also domestic varieties. Italian bees are about 1.2 cm long, with short and hard hair on the head and chest and different colors. There are two big compound eyes and three single eyes on the head, and the vision is strong. And a pair of antennae that can feel the smell. Bees are social insects and live in hives. The members of the bee colony are divided into three grades: worker bees are spiny undeveloped females; The queen bee is bigger than the worker bee and has thorns; Drones are also bigger than worker bees and have no thorns. Both queen bees and worker bees lay eggs, but only the eggs of queen bees combine with the sperm of drones to develop into female bees, while the eggs of worker bees develop into drones. The queen bee does not hatch into a queen bee, but is fed with royal jelly produced by worker bee salivary glands before becoming a queen bee. The eggs hatch into larvae after 3 days. At first, she was fed royal jelly, and later only the future queen bee continued to feed royal jelly. Larvae grow into pupae. The emergence time is no, the queen bee emerges 16 days, the worker bee is 3 weeks, and the drone is a few days later than the worker bee. After the queen bee appeared, they fought with each other until there was only one left in the hive. The new queen bee attacked the old queen bee again, and the old queen bee led a group of bees to leave and set up a new colony. A beehive consists of a series of beehives. The beehive has two hexagonal beehives, which are made of beeswax produced by worker bees. Beehives store food-bee bread made of honey, nectar and pollen. Bees lay eggs in the nest room, larvae live in the nest room, larvae living in groups are fed by worker bees, and larvae living alone feed on female bees and are stored in bee bread in the nest room. When the bee bread eats them up, the larvae mature and pupate, and emerge from the cocoon when they emerge. There are several generations in a year for domestic bees and 1 ~ 3 generations for wild bees. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. According to American reports, the effect of bee pollination on onion yield is very obvious. Beekeeping and honey production have a long history in China. China people began to raise bees in China as early as 4,000 years ago. At present, there are about 50 million bees in the world, with an annual output of about 600,000 tons of honey. Honey is a tonic commonly used by people and has the reputation of "milk for the elderly"; Royal jelly is a kind of advanced nutrition, 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. Usually, a worker bee goes out to collect honey for more than 40 times a day, and each time it collects honey 100, the collected nectar can only brew 0.5g of honey. When picking honey, they will stop in the center of the flowers and stick out their tubular "tongues" to suck the sweet juice. Go back to the hive, spit the flower juice in the empty hive, and then suck the sweet juice back into the body at night to brew, then spit it out and suck it in. It takes 100 to 240 times to make sweet honey. Honey will also bring pollen back to the nest as its own food.