Honey bees are amazing pollinators; their buzz is responsible for pollinating crops of all sorts – wine grapes included! Without them, vineyards would simply die off.
Bees have six legs and three body parts (head, thorax and abdomen). A worker bee can produce around one-twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in her lifetime; their wings beat 11,400 times per minute to produce that buzzing sound we hear as they buzz their wings against one another to create buzzing sounds.
1. Bees are the only insects that produce food that man can eat.
Apis mellifera) is our primary agricultural pollinator, responsible for pollinating approximately 80% of fruit, vegetable, and seed crops across the US. Their efficiency lies in their capacity to deposit full loads of pollen on each flower they visit – workers typically carry twice their bodyweight in pollen each day!
Honey bees are herbivorous insects that source their sustenance solely from nectar and pollen produced by flowers, making their anatomy perfectly tailored for collecting this source of nutrition; their tongue is long and curved to gather pollen from flowers while their true stomach coils around efficiently to maximize space efficiency. Furthermore, honey bees feature four eyes at the top of their head which allow them to observe how colored surfaces reflect or absorb light – giving the bees an insight into flower color and composition that human observers do not possess.
Honey bees not only collect nectar and pollen for energy use; they also collect “honeydew,” an energy-rich sweet substance produced by sap-sucking insects such as aphids or white flies that has been secreted into their hives by certain sap-sucking organisms like aphids or white flies and stored with it until being consumed as energy by bees for energy needs.
Honey bees are social insects that live in hives they constructed themselves, hexagon by hexagon. Within their home is where they store the food they collect and where the queen lays her eggs, as well as protection from predators and the elements. Bees only sting to defend their territory or when threatened; their stingers have barbed sacs attached that release poison upon contact with skin.
2. Bees have five eyes.
Bees feature two large compound eyes on either side of their head and three smaller “eyespots” at the top, which help recognize colors, shapes, sizes, as well as aiding navigation – for instance when Wildflower Meadows queen bees return from mating flights, these compound eyes guide them back home!
Honey bees may come as a shock, but their sight rivals our own; this is due to being able to detect movements separated by as little as 1/300th of a second – this helps them evade bee swatters and other swift-flying predators more effectively.
Bees possess complex eyes comprised of thousands of tiny “micro-eyes”, known as ommatidia. Each ommatidium possesses lenses, cones, and cells which gather information about their surroundings from slightly different angles before being processed by their brain to form a 3D picture of what surrounds them.
bees possess exceptional eye sight that allows them to see color, shapes, sizes, as well as sense movement. By sensing nearby flowers moving during daylight hours, bees can find the appropriate place to forage for food during daytime hours – which explains why some bees prefer foraging at dusk or dawn instead of during the daylight hours.
Bees possess three simple eyes arranged in a triangular arrangement on top of their heads called ocelli that provide light sensing capabilities without visual images; these small lenses cannot perceive images but do help detect changes in light levels – for instance when predators approach, these ocelli can detect shadows cast upon its wings by predators that would cast on to its head and tell when danger threatens.
3. Bees are the only insects that make a noise.
Honey bees produce their buzzing sound due to beating wings that beat up to 200 times per second, producing vibrations which are audible by other bees in their vicinity.
Wing beats are also responsible for bees’ iconic dancing movements, known as waggle dances, used to communicate information about food sources to other members of their colony. Waggle dances indicate location, distance, size and quality. Dances also display directions of travel indicated by an angle relative to sun’s position.
A hive consists of one queen bee and her attendants – female workers. The queen bee’s primary purpose is laying eggs; workers perform all other duties. Bees play an essential role in collecting nectar and pollen from flowers as well as pollinating crops – without bees’ services many fruits and vegetables would simply never grow!
Bees produce more honey than they can consume at once, so they store it away in a hive for later consumption. The bees maintain heat inside by their body heat while cooling fans on their wings keep temperatures cool. Beeswax seals cracks to protect the hive from weather conditions.
Honey bees, an insect from the Apidae family, are well known for producing honey and other forms of sweeteners for human consumption. According to estimates, one out of every three mouthfuls we consume comes directly from their honey production.
4. Bees are the only insects that can fly.
Apis mellifera) is an insect belonging to the Apini tribe and well known for producing and storing honey, its sweet liquid form. Honey bees can fly and build large nests from wax secreted by other bees within their colony; when an individual dies within, her fellow workers quickly remove her to protect the brood and food stores from contamination. Honey bees work constantly to maintain their colonies’ cleanliness – dust, hairs and pests must all be eliminated immediately as part of keeping upkeep; these workers remove everything they find before leaving their colonies uncomplainingly.
Bees possess two compound eyes with thousands of facets that respond to light and polarized sun rays, creating a map of the sky when sunlight is not out and helping them navigate during low light levels. Three smaller eyes known as ocelli are placed strategically around their heads that enable them to detect ultraviolet light emanating from flowers.
Bees possess two stomachs; one for eating and one for storing pollen to be processed into honey. Their antennae contain over 300 taste receptors and their brains are the size of a sesame seed. Each hind leg contains a corbicula basket-like structure, known as corbicula, to hold and compress pollen grains gathered from plants before either being released directly into their mouth for consumption or transferred directly into her pollen basket and stored as they work.
Bees use the waggle dance to communicate to other bees about where to find food in their immediate area, with scientists even training honey bees as bomb detectors by teaching them to extend their tongues and detect potentially explosive chemicals.
5. Bees are the only insects that have stingers.
Honey bee wings beat 11,400 times per minute, producing their distinctive buzz. On one foraging trip, the insect visits 50 to 100 flowers and can carry as much as 35% of its body weight in pollen. Their head features eyes, antennae, feeding structures as well as three segments from its thorax and six visible segments from its abdomen that contain female reproductive organs found only in queen bees or drones and the bee’s stinger – as well as its three visible segments that include three segments from its thorax and six visible segments from its abdomen housing female reproductive organs found in queen bees while male reproductive organs exist only on drones or queen bees respectively.
Bees possess surprisingly complex brains for such small creatures. Scientists have discovered that bees can count, sense gravity and recognize colors; as well as comprehending concepts like same/different and above/below which require relationships between objects rather than physical features alone. Bees are also adept at choosing ideal nest sites via female “scout bees”, flying out and searching for suitable places before reporting back through waggle dance dance to their colony.
The waggle dance is a series of movements used by honey bees to signal where to go for food or water, with each bee using an excited dance to convey this information to its fellow bees. Honey bees belong to Hymenoptera insect order; which also includes wasps, ants and sawflies; however only female workers (workers) and the queen bee can sting humans.