Insects

Honeybees

Honeybees are social insects. Like all insects, they have three body parts: head, thorax, and abdomen, wear their skeleton on the outside; called an exoskeleton and have six legs, two antennae, and two pairs of wings. Honeybees live in cooperative groups where each bee has its own special job. Wild honeybees like to live in dark places and will often build their hives in hollow trees. Beekeepers; honeybees live in wooden box hives.

Types of Honeybees

There are three different types of honeybees:

The queen is the largest of the honeybees. There is only one queen in every hive. She can live for three to five years. It is the queen’s job to lay eggs. She can lay as many as 2,000 a day.

Drones are the male bees. They are smaller than the queen bee. There are about 100 drones in each hive. It is the drone’s job to mate with the queen. Drones do not sting.

There are thousands of small female worker bees in each hive. The worker bees only live for four to six weeks. These females do not lay eggs. The jobs of a worker bee change as she ages. At the beginning of her life, she is involved in hive duties such as producing royal jelly and nursing the emerging young. Later she is involved in wax making, packing pollen cells, cleaning house, making repairs, and guarding the entrance to the hive. In her final weeks, she becomes a field bee and goes out into the fields to collect nectar and pollen.

Inside The Hive

The beehive consists of hexagon-shaped cells. Most of the cells are used to store honey, but some are used for laying eggs. These egg cells are called brood cells.

The queen lays her eggs inside the brood cells. After three days, the larvae emerge. The larvae are fed royal jelly by the worker bees for three days, then bee bread (a mixture of pollen and nectar), and finally, honey for the last three days. The larvae then spin cocoons. A nurse bee seals the cells with wax. Inside the cocoon, pupae develop. Finally, after another ten days, the adult bees emerge.

A larva, destined to be queen, is fed royal jelly throughout her 16-day development, and she grows to be much larger than the drones and workers.

The Young Worker Bee

Young worker bees are known as house bees because they perform chores inside the hive. These chores include:

Cleaning the cells

Feeding bee bread to the older drones and the worker larvae

Feeding bee milk to the younger drones and worker larvae

Feeding royal jelly to the queen larvae

Producing wax to make new honeycomb

Receiving nectar from the field bees and depositing it in honey cells

Packing pollen into pollen cells

Guarding the entrance of the hive and protecting the hive and its honey.

The Field Bee

The last three weeks of a worker bee’s life are spent in the fields. Field bees make up to ten journeys out of the hive every day, each lasting about one hour. While out in the field, the field bee collects water, sap, nectar, and pollen.

Water is used to thin the honey and to keep the hive cool in the hot summer.

Field bees gather sap from plants and store it in their pollen baskets. The sap is used as bee glue to seal cracks in the hive.

Nectar is collected from the flowers the field bees visit. The bee sucks the nectar with her tongue and stores it in her honey stomach.

Pollen sticks to the bee’s hairy body and its antennae as the bee sucks nectar from flowers. After leaving the flower, the bee brushes the pollen into the pollen baskets located on its hind legs. As the bee moves, it carries pollen from flower to flower and pollinates the flowers for seed and fruit production. Bees store the pollen they collect in the hive’s pollen cells. It is eaten by the bees to provide good protein for growth.

How Bees Make Honey

Field bees and house bees need to make honey together. The field bees are responsible for locating nectar-rich flowers. The nectar is sucked from the flower and stored inside the special honey stomach. While flying back to the hive, the nectar begins to change to honey. Once in the hive, the field bees transfer the nectar to the house bees through their tongues. The house bees spread droplets of nectar on the roof of a honey cell where it dries. Other house bees fan their wings to help the nectar evaporate and change into honey. Finally, other house bees cap the cell with wax, and the aging nectar becomes honey.

How Do Bees Know Where to Find Nectar-Rich Flowers?

Field bees show each other where to find nectar by dancing on the honeycomb. Other field bees touch and smell the dancing bee. By smelling with their antennae, they can tell what type of flower was visited. By touching the dancer and feeling her movement, they can tell the direction the flowers are located. Field bees dance two different dances: the Round Dance, meaning the flowers are close to the hive, and the Wag-Tail Dance, meaning the flowers are farther away and I’ll show you where they are located in relation to the sun.

Bee keeping

People have kept bees for thousands of years and harvested honey, pollen, and beeswax from the hives. Modern hives have removable sections called supers that contain the honeycombs. To protect themselves, beekeepers wear special clothing and use special tools:

A sturdy mesh hat with a veil to keep the bees from stinging the beekeeper’s face

Heavy gloves to handle the hive and protect the beekeeper’s hands from stings

White coveralls with elastic cuffs and ankles to stop bees from crawling inside

A tool called a smoker to puff out smoke and calm the bees. When the bees smell the smoke, they eat lots of honey, and they are less likely to sting.

Honey is the main product extracted from the hive. It is mainly used to sweeten food. Beeswax is used to make candles, crayons, shoe polish, and floor polish. Sometimes, bee pollen is extracted and eaten as a protein supplement.

Currently, beekeepers all over the country are having a hard time keeping their colonies alive because of two kinds of mites. These mites, the varroah and tracheal, infest the colony and kill all the bees. The implication for crop pollination is immense. Farmers in the Midwest have already felt the impact of declining bee populations.

Dragonflies

Dragonflies are an ancient order of insect; their ancestors have ruled the air for 300 million years.  Dragonflies are effective predators of the wetland both in the nymph and adult stages.  Dragonfly nymphs are found exclusively in ponds, marshes, and along lake shores.  They are equipped with huge compound eyes and have nearly a 360 degree view of the world around them.  Dragonfly nymphs are unlike their flying adult counterparts.  As nymphs, they are reduced to moving with their long spider-like legs; they use gills to breathe and are drab.  Dragonfly nymphs use their dark brown color to help them camouflage to their surroundings as they hunt for insects, mollusks, worms, and sometimes small fish.  When a dragonfly nymph is ready to change into the adult form, it climbs out on a stable plant, splits its skin, and emerges as an adult.

Adult dragonflies are equally strong predators, catching their food on the wing.  Dragonflies commonly fly at about 25 miles per hour but are capable of spurts of speed of up to 75 miles per hour.  Dragonflies use their sharp eyesight and legs to catch their food.

Whirligig Beetles

The whirligig beetle spends most of its time on the surface of the water.  Whirligigs have two pairs of eyes.  One pair faces up to see prey on the surface, and the other pair faces down to see prey below.  The adult whirligig beetles protect themselves from predators with an odor.  Some emit a foul odor, and one type secretes a milky substance that smells like apples.  Although the smell of apples might not be offensive to humans, it fends off their predators.

Story County Conservation
Linda R. F. Zaletel
56461 180th St.
Ames, IA 50010
www.storycounty.com  go to “Conservation and Parks”