Bee

(Jrt)

Bee
Apis is a genus which includes seven to nine species of social insects of the family of bees (apidae) and producing honey. This is the only kind of Apini Tribe. Members of this genus are commonly referred to as bees to honey, a term that also includes species other genres.

Definition
It typically identifies three sub-types:

* Subgenus Micrapis:
O Apis andreniformis
O Apis florea, or bee honey dwarf which is sometimes collected from wild colonies.
* Subgenus Megapis:
O Apis dorsata, or whose giant bee honey is sometimes collected from wild colonies.
* Sub-genus Apis:
O Apis cerana
O Apis koschevnikovi
O Apis mellifera, indigenous to Europe and Africa, widely introduced in other continents like America and Australia is the main species for high honey production. It is particularly suitable for beekeeping.
O Apis nigrocincta, introduced in Asia, is also high on a large scale.

Some varieties are considered domestic.

Sometimes called bees to honey "fly" although this is not at all a fly from a scientific point of view (Diptera).

Morphology
Like all insects, the body of a bee is divided into three:

* Head covering:
O two large compound eyes Side (4000 triangles).
O three simple eyes or ocelli.
O with two antennas cubits twelve articles Hairy.
O an oral appliance at the same time lécheur (with a language) and sucking (forming a channel vacuum).
* Chest composed of three fused rings,
O each bearing a pair of legs. The six legs of a bee ending with two hooks, and a body adhesive for taking taking on many types of surfaces. The bee also uses a kind of comb, composed of rigid hairs on its two front legs, to clean up its branches. This cleaning is done when it slips its branches and falls head. The hind legs are particularly suited to the harvest (comb and brush) and transport (trash) pollen.
O focus on which two pairs of membranous wings ribbed few. (During the flight the subsequent, smaller, are linked to earlier by a score of chitinous hooks, which makes them solidarity).
O on which opens a pair of small holes to take a breath: the stigma for inspiration.
* Abdomen composed of seven segments of which six are apparent and composed of rigid plates, a ventral and dorsal side connected by a thin flexible blade chitineuse. A blade of the same type connects successive segments.
O Segments 1 through 6 show the stigma used to expiration.
O The segments 3 to 6 have their plates under ventral cirières glands.
O Among females, abdomen present at the end a venomous sting (stinger).

The queen
The queen is the only person fertile female in the colony. She comes from a fertilized egg identical to that of a female worker, but eggs in a special cell (royal cell) and largest round - rather like the hexagonal ouvrières.Tout throughout its development, the larvae will be fed exclusively to the royal jelly, and this regime, and he alone, enabling it to become a queen. The queens are produced exclusively in the spring, or a queen to replace aging or ill, or for a spin (which occurs only if the colony is prosperous and favorable weather).

Shortly after his birth, the young Queen will undertake flights wedding. She will join an assembly point, where males gather in the vicinity, thus ensuring genetic diversity. She will mate with multiple males, in full flight, until his spermathèque is filled. Males who have fertilized will all die soon after mating, the genitals had been ripped (their role is finished). The queen will keep everything in its spermathèque sperm and fertilized remain for the rest of his life (four to five years).

It has an elongated abdomen more than mere workers. The abdomen has even less hair, allowing it, because of its size, and ultimately more easily in each cell. Unlike workers, the sting of the queen does not have hooks and does not remain hanging in an animal skin during a sting (avoiding the queen to die).

It is rare to observe a queen on the outside, then it is relatively easy to notice within a beehive: surrounded by many workers who protect and nurture.

Workers
These are the individuals most likely of the colony (over 40000 in general) and they are sterile females whose ovarian function is bloqué.Une winter working lives and a few months working summer only a few weeks.

The drones
The males, known as drones or abeillauds, are larger than the females and are products of spring to early summer. They are not involved in the harvesting of nectar or pollen, with a language too short to browse the flowers. They have no spurs, so they are defenceless. They do not secrete beeswax, venom or royal jelly. For some species, there are approximately 2500 per colony, they come from the development of non-fertilized ova they are haploid and therefore do not have a father. They usually leave that for the period of reproduction.

Their role is strictly limited to the fertilization of young queens (nuptial flight). Those who have the "opportunity" to mate with a queen died shortly thereafter. As for the other drones, workers cease at the end of the summer to feed these hungry mouths unnecessary and, increasingly weakened as autumn approaches, they end up being ruthlessly dismissed from the hive and die, exhausted.

The larvae
The fertilized egg is laid by the queen at the bottom of a cell. It éclôt three or four days after spawning. The larva is first fed with royal jelly, liquid secreted by glands foster workers, and then by a mixture of pollen and honey. Ten days after the eggs, larvae eventually grow, the cell is operculée with wax. The larva s'enveloppe a cocoon. Twelve days later, a young bees get out of his cell, it has its size and aspect final. Three weeks have passed since the spawn.

The role of the queen
In a natural cavity or in a hive, the whole life of the colony revolves around the queen. A colony without a queen is condemned to disappear, but only a queen can do nothing because it is unable to provide larval rearing. By its presence, the queen prevents the behaviour of building blocks and alveoli royal functioning ovarian workers. In the case of the death of a queen, the ovaries of some workers (workers called hens), whose pheromones of the queen so far prevented the development ( "chemical castration"), will begin to produce eggs, but as they are not impregnated females, their eggs that would give males (that is a particular case of parthenogenesis). It will be a beehive "bourdonneuse" will eventually die in the absence of a new queen.


The lives of workers
Within a colony, there is division of labour in these various activities are performed by workers of different ages. During his life, a worker changes job.

In summer, the life of a worker is short (5 to 6 weeks) and it has the following positions during their lifetime:

* Cleaner: 24 hours after its "birth" (fledging), it cleans the air sacs released in the wake of outbreaks.
* Nanny: from the 4th day, it feeds the larvae older; at the 6th day, it nourishes the young larvae with royal jelly that it is capable of regurgitating.
* Worker Interior: from the 10th to 18th day, the worker attends indifferently:
O setting aside crop (pollen and nectar), it is magasinière,
O the breakdown of the colony, it is ventileuse and contributes to the evaporation of water from the nectar which turns into honey
O of operculation cells,
O maintenance: cleaning, rejecting out foreign bodies, individuals dead and poorly trained, caulk cracks with the resin harvested in some buds: propolis. During this period, young workers learn to move on the outside and regain their colony.

* Cirière: glands located in the abdomen can secrete the wax from the 21st day. Wax appears in the form of small plates from the last four segments of the abdomen. Workers cirières the knead with their mandibles and then work in groups to build new cells.

* Guardian and rappeleuse: it is also to the 18th day that the worker becomes capable of defending the entrance to the settlement or to ensure the expulsion of the male no longer needed. That's when it can noting her abdomen and beating wings, emit odors (thanks to Nassanov glands), which provide guidance for younger workers, it will then function rappeleuse. They are also older workers three weeks caring and feeding the queen.

* Forager: from the 20th day and until his death, the worker involved in the harvesting of nectar and pollen. She visits flowers, suck nectar it carries in its crop prior to regurgitate. In the crop, nectar undergoes early digestion that helps transform it into honey.

It is about foraging 5500000 flowers to get a kilo of honey. Depending on the needs, it also harvest pollen. With its mandibles, then grinds the anthers of the stamens and then, thanks to the adjustment of its hind legs, with his brushes, she gathers pollen grains in a big ball it up in the trash where long hair maintain . Upon his return, the forager filed its own harvest or entrust to a magasinière.

It was also upon his return that she tells her companions, by dancing, the distance and direction of its area of harvest. On the other hand, the smell of which is impregnated bee other information on the species of flowers butinées.

A careful observation of a settlement, however, shows that in normal circumstances many bees do nothing special, as a labor reserve in providing the colony a adaptability.

Read also Bee

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