Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Subclass: Pterygota
Infraclass: Neoptera
Super order: Endopterygota
Order: Hymenoptera
Suborder: Apocrita
Family: Apidae
Subfamily: Apinae
Tribe: Apini
Thursday, November 26, 2009
EFFECT OF DEFORESTATION ON HONEY BEES:
Earlier honey bees use to build their hives on tree tops but today they have shifted themselves to human dominated areas. This is because they don’t find their natural habitat i.e. they don’t find trees. Deforestation has led to this change. Hence honey bees have been deeply affected by deforestation. Thus the honey bees have come to buildings to build their hives. When they come to these buildings, they are often destroyed by humans to protect themselves from the stings of bees. If this is going to happen then the entire species of honey bees will be destroyed one day or the other. Thus we can infer that deforestation has led to the great destruction of honeybees.
In our field work, we visited many human dominated areas to enquire people how they feel when any comb is built in their house. We got 99% negative answer. They said that they would destroy it as soon as they saw a new hive. People are afraid of their dangerous stings. They are also eliminated from some farms and gardens. But the real fact is that honey bees can pollinate more number of flowers than any other insects. In Cuddalore, honey bees built their hives in KNC, St. Josephs College and even in our school. But all these hives were destroyed within a matter of few seconds. We have also made a note of different sites of destruction in and around cuddalore
In our field work, we visited many human dominated areas to enquire people how they feel when any comb is built in their house. We got 99% negative answer. They said that they would destroy it as soon as they saw a new hive. People are afraid of their dangerous stings. They are also eliminated from some farms and gardens. But the real fact is that honey bees can pollinate more number of flowers than any other insects. In Cuddalore, honey bees built their hives in KNC, St. Josephs College and even in our school. But all these hives were destroyed within a matter of few seconds. We have also made a note of different sites of destruction in and around cuddalore
CARBON SEQUESTRATION: -
The process of trapping carbon from the atmosphere is called as carbon sequestration.
Honey bees build their hives by trapping carbon from the atmosphere. The main composition of bee wax is C40 and C46. This can be easily obtained from the atmosphere by honey bees.
When bees build many hives then the carbon dioxide intensity will be reduced.
This bee wax can be used in the factories’ chimneys to reduce the intensity of CO2 expelled. This bee wax can be used as filters in chimneys and thereby it can really control air pollution.
It can also be used to coat the false ceilings like asbestos, thermo Cole etc. If it is done so then the room temperature will be reduced naturally. Thus the air conditioners are not required if this method is followed. As a result the emissions of Chloro fluoro carbons (CFC), Hydro Chloro fluoro carbons (HCFC) will be decreased which is causing the ozone depletion.
Honey bees build their hives by trapping carbon from the atmosphere. The main composition of bee wax is C40 and C46. This can be easily obtained from the atmosphere by honey bees.
When bees build many hives then the carbon dioxide intensity will be reduced.
This bee wax can be used in the factories’ chimneys to reduce the intensity of CO2 expelled. This bee wax can be used as filters in chimneys and thereby it can really control air pollution.
It can also be used to coat the false ceilings like asbestos, thermo Cole etc. If it is done so then the room temperature will be reduced naturally. Thus the air conditioners are not required if this method is followed. As a result the emissions of Chloro fluoro carbons (CFC), Hydro Chloro fluoro carbons (HCFC) will be decreased which is causing the ozone depletion.
Bee Swarms 2009
turned out to be a typical year for bee swarms as we received just about 20 swarm calls this year. No great pictures this year as it seemed most swarm calls came in during the day when I was working.
Last year was extremely crazy with bee swarms and you can read about 2008 below.
2008 is turning out to be our busiest year for collecting swarms in well over 10 years. It's July 1st and we've collected 15 swarms. In 2007, we only had 4 the entire year. After speaking with other beekeepers around the U.S. many are just like us - running out of equipment to house them in. In addition to our honey business, we are busy building and maintaining beehives of our own. Below are some pictures from swarms we've collected.
This first one was just collected in June 2008 at a nursing home in our town. They were cutting down a large Maple Tree when they were surprised at what they found! After the tree hit the ground bees starting buzzing:) Glenn took his chain saw and had to cut the tree open to expose them.
He then took the parts of the tree and shook many bees into the hive.
After shaking lots of bees into the new hive, he then started to remove the chunks of comb honey which were within the tree. We were lucky and found the queen bee pretty quickly and placed her into the new hive which makes it a bunch easier to get the other bees to follow her into the hive. After he got the bees off the honey comb and into the hive, he placed the honey comb into buckets with lids.
After he is done removing the comb and cleaning out the inside of the tree, he will place a hive body directly above where the bees were and leave this here overnight. The temperatures were pretty hot and in the mid 80's late into the evening. During the night particularly if it is cold outside the bees will find their way into this new hive by the scent of the queen. We then went and picked up the new hive around 5am before the bees started to fly and brought it back to one of our bee yards.
Glenn will place a lid on the bee hive and leave it here until the night time giving all the bees time to find their new home. We also placed sticks from the bottom of the tree up to the bee hive allowing bees to simply walk up to their new house.
The pictures below show our previous swarms we've captured. Below is an interesting swarm that happened in our own yard. We had 2 hives next to each other and one was empty. We were about to move the empty hive down below on our property and place it out to try and capture a swarm. All of a sudden we heard an incredible buzzing sound and looked out to see bees everywhere. The bees from 1 hive swarmed and took up "house" right next door in the empty hive.
I ran out and stood in the middle of the swarm and captured some pictures. These pictures are not even close to showing all the bees that were flying. What a "rush" that was and we wish all swarms were this easy to capture.
Some of these pictures I kept pretty large so you can see the swarm.
Notice all the bees flying in the area.
The hive on the right swarmed to the hive on the left.
You can see bees if you look at the pines and all the little "debris" flying in the air are honey bees. Also below picture shows this some.
This is another close up - we walked right up to the hives and what a sight, we were surrounded by thousands of bees, tried to get my video camera (battery dead!) out and will try to get a small movie clip on the website if I can catch one while they're circling overhead. It's an amazing sight!
Swarm on May 19th, 2005
We were waiting for one of our hives to swarm and thought it had. We learned after we caught the swarm that this one came from a tree that had become the home to some of our bees last year from a swarm.
The swarm came from the The bees swarmed from the tree
center hole in this tree. & ended up in this small tree area.
Glenn starts to trim the area around the swarm to be able to cut the branch holding the swarm. This branch will then be placed inside a new hive box which is shown below. We'll leave the bees here until nightfall to make sure we get most of the bees. Then we'll move them to their new location
2009
Last year was extremely crazy with bee swarms and you can read about 2008 below.
2008 is turning out to be our busiest year for collecting swarms in well over 10 years. It's July 1st and we've collected 15 swarms. In 2007, we only had 4 the entire year. After speaking with other beekeepers around the U.S. many are just like us - running out of equipment to house them in. In addition to our honey business, we are busy building and maintaining beehives of our own. Below are some pictures from swarms we've collected.
This first one was just collected in June 2008 at a nursing home in our town. They were cutting down a large Maple Tree when they were surprised at what they found! After the tree hit the ground bees starting buzzing:) Glenn took his chain saw and had to cut the tree open to expose them.
He then took the parts of the tree and shook many bees into the hive.
After shaking lots of bees into the new hive, he then started to remove the chunks of comb honey which were within the tree. We were lucky and found the queen bee pretty quickly and placed her into the new hive which makes it a bunch easier to get the other bees to follow her into the hive. After he got the bees off the honey comb and into the hive, he placed the honey comb into buckets with lids.
After he is done removing the comb and cleaning out the inside of the tree, he will place a hive body directly above where the bees were and leave this here overnight. The temperatures were pretty hot and in the mid 80's late into the evening. During the night particularly if it is cold outside the bees will find their way into this new hive by the scent of the queen. We then went and picked up the new hive around 5am before the bees started to fly and brought it back to one of our bee yards.
Glenn will place a lid on the bee hive and leave it here until the night time giving all the bees time to find their new home. We also placed sticks from the bottom of the tree up to the bee hive allowing bees to simply walk up to their new house.
The pictures below show our previous swarms we've captured. Below is an interesting swarm that happened in our own yard. We had 2 hives next to each other and one was empty. We were about to move the empty hive down below on our property and place it out to try and capture a swarm. All of a sudden we heard an incredible buzzing sound and looked out to see bees everywhere. The bees from 1 hive swarmed and took up "house" right next door in the empty hive.
I ran out and stood in the middle of the swarm and captured some pictures. These pictures are not even close to showing all the bees that were flying. What a "rush" that was and we wish all swarms were this easy to capture.
Some of these pictures I kept pretty large so you can see the swarm.
Notice all the bees flying in the area.
The hive on the right swarmed to the hive on the left.
You can see bees if you look at the pines and all the little "debris" flying in the air are honey bees. Also below picture shows this some.
This is another close up - we walked right up to the hives and what a sight, we were surrounded by thousands of bees, tried to get my video camera (battery dead!) out and will try to get a small movie clip on the website if I can catch one while they're circling overhead. It's an amazing sight!
Swarm on May 19th, 2005
We were waiting for one of our hives to swarm and thought it had. We learned after we caught the swarm that this one came from a tree that had become the home to some of our bees last year from a swarm.
The swarm came from the The bees swarmed from the tree
center hole in this tree. & ended up in this small tree area.
Glenn starts to trim the area around the swarm to be able to cut the branch holding the swarm. This branch will then be placed inside a new hive box which is shown below. We'll leave the bees here until nightfall to make sure we get most of the bees. Then we'll move them to their new location
I ran out and stood in the middle of the swarm and captured some pictures. These pictures are not even close to showing all the bees that were flying. What a "rush" that was and we wish all swarms were this easy to capture.
Some of these pictures I kept pretty large so you can see the swarm.
Notice all the bees flying in the area.
The hive on the right swarmed to the hive on the left.
You can see bees if you look at the pines and all the little "debris" flying in the air are honey bees. Also below picture shows this some.
This is another close up - we walked right up to the hives and what a sight, we were surrounded by thousands of bees, tried to get my video camera (battery dead!) out and will try to get a small movie clip on the website if I can catch one while they're circling overhead. It's an amazing sight!
Swarm on May 19th, 2005
We were waiting for one of our hives to swarm and thought it had. We learned after we caught the swarm that this one came from a tree that had become the home to some of our bees last year from a swarm.
The swarm came from the The bees swarmed from the tree
center hole in this tree. & ended up in this small tree area.
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2009More about Honey Bees
More about Honey Bees
Reproduction and Development
The queen controls the sex of her offspring. When an egg passes from her ovary to her oviduct, the queen determines whether the egg is fertilized with sperm from the spermatheca. A fertilized egg develops into a female honey bee, either worker or queen, and an unfertilized egg becomes a male honey bee, or drone. The queen lays the eggs that will develop into more queens in specially constructed downward-pointing, peanut-shaped cells, in which the egg adheres to the ceiling. These cells are filled with royal jelly to keep the larvae from falling and to feed them.
Worker bees are raised in the multi-purpose, horizontally arranged cells of the comb. Future workers receive royal jelly only during the first two days, compared to future queens, who are fed royal jelly throughout their larval life. This difference accounts for the great variation in anatomy and function between adult workers and queens. On average, the development of the queen from egg to adult requires 16 days; that of the worker, 21 days; and that of the drone, 24 days.
Activities
Field honey bees collect flower nectar. On entering the hive with a full honey sac, which is an enlargement of the esophagus, the field bee regurgitates the contents into the mouth of a young worker, called the house, or nurse, bee. The house bee deposits the nectar in a cell and carries out the tasks necessary to convert the nectar to honey. When the honey is fully ripened, the cell is sealed with an airtight wax capping. Both old and young workers are required to store the winter supplies of honey.
Pollen is carried into the nest or hive on the hind legs of the field bees and placed directly in the cells. The pollen of a given load is derived mostly from plants of one species, which accounts for the honey bee's outstanding role as pollinator. If it flew from one flower species to another, it would not be effective in the transfer of pollen, but by confining its visits on a given trip to the blossoms of a single species, it provides the cross-pollination required in many varieties of plants.
Communication
An amazing symbolic communication system exists among honey bees. In studies of bees begun in the early 1900s, the Austrian zoologist Karl von Frisch determined many of the details of their means of communication. In a classic paper published in 1923, von Frisch described how after a field bee discovers a new source of food, such as a field in bloom, she fills her honey sac with nectar, returns to the nest or hive, and performs a vigorous but highly standardized dance. If the new source of food is within about 90 m (about 295 ft) of the nest or hive, the bee performs a circular dance, first moving about 2 cm (about .75 in) or more, and then circling in the opposite direction. Numerous bees in the nest or hive closely follow the dancer, imitating her movements. During this ceremony, the other workers scent the fragrance of the flowers from which the dancer collected the nectar. Having learned that food is not far from the nest or hive, and what it smells like, the other bees leave the nest or hive and fly in widening circles until they find the source.
If the new source of nectar or pollen is farther away, the discoverer performs a more elaborate dance characterized by intermittent movement across the diameter of the circle and constant, vigorous wagging of her abdomen. Every movement of this dance seems to have significance. The number of times the bee circles during a given interval informs the other bees how far to fly for the food. Movement across the diameter in a straight run indicates the direction of the food source. If the straight run is upward, the source is directly toward the sun. Should the straight run be downward, it signifies that the bees may reach the food by flying with their backs to the sun. In the event the straight run veers off at an angle to the vertical, the bees must follow a course to the right or left of the sun at the same angle that the straight run deviates from the vertical.
Bees under observation in a glass hive demonstrate their instructions so clearly that it is possible for trained observers to understand the directions given by the dancers. Certain aspects of the dance language, such as how attendant bees perceive the motion of dancers in the total darkness of the nest or hive, are still unknown. The dance language is an important survival strategy that has helped the honey bee in its success as a species.
Problems of Survival
Honey bees are subject to various diseases and parasites. American and European foulbrood are two widespread contagious bacterial diseases that attack bee larvae. A protozoan parasite, Nosema, and a virus cause dysentery and paralysis in adult bees. Two species of blood-sucking parasitic mites are particularly troublesome for beekeepers and are currently affecting wild honey bees worldwide.
The honey bee tracheal mite lives in the breathing tubes of adult bees; the varroa mite lives on the outside of larvae and adults. These mites have killed tens of thousands of honey bee colonies in North America during the past ten years. Scientific breeding programs are attempting to develop tolerant strains of domestic honey bees to replace the mite-susceptible ones currently used. Tracheal mite infestations can be reduced by fumigation of the hive with menthol fumes. Varroa mites are controlled with a miticide or, in some European countries, with fumes of formic acid. Certain hive management techniques also can reduce infestations.
Many other animals prey upon individual honey bees, which may sometimes weaken colonies. Examples are cane toads and bee eaters (birds), which pick off foragers near the colony entrance; robber flies, which take individual foragers as they visit flowers; and hornets and bee wolves (wasps), which may enter the nest or hive and steal larvae. Bears have an insatiable appetite for honey and bee larvae and may destroy many nests or hives in a single raid.
Honey bee colonies used in commercial pollination and those kept in urban areas are exposed to pesticides, fungicides, fertilizers, and other agricultural chemicals and are frequently poisoned by accident. This is a major concern of modern beekeepers.
Importance
Honey bees have become the primary source of pollination for approximately one-fourth of all crops produced in the United States and some other countries. The value of the crops that rely on such pollination has been estimated as high as billion annually in the United States. Examples of fruit crops that rely on honey bees are almonds, apples, apricots, avocados, blackberries, blueberries, cantaloupes, cherries, cranberries, cucumbers, pears, raspberries, strawberries and watermelons. The seeds of many vegetables are also produced with honey bee pollination; examples include alfalfa, asparagus, broccoli, brussel sprouts, cabbage, carrots, clover, cotton, cucumbers, onions, radishes, squash, sweet clover, and turnips.
Many species of wild pollinators have disappeared from the land as their habitats have been destroyed or altered by humans. The honey bee has taken over as pollinator of many of the wild plants that remain; its ecological value in this regard is tremendous.
Honey bees are the sole source of honey and beeswax, a fine wax with unusual qualities. Honey bees also produce propolis, a gummy substance made from tree sap that has antibacterial properties, and royal jelly and pollen for human consumption. Honey bee venom is extracted for the production of antivenom therapy and is being investigated as a treatment for several serious diseases of the muscles, connective tissue, and immune system, including multiple sclerosis and arthritis.
Scientific classification
Honey bees comprise the genus Apis in the family Apidae, order Hymenoptera. The European honey bee is classified as Apis mellifera, the Indian honey bee is A. cerana, Koschevnikov's honey bee is A. koschevnikovi, the dwarf honey bee is A. florea, the andreniform dwarf honey bee is A. andreniformis, the giant honey bee is A. dorsata, and the mountain giant honey bee is A. laboriosa. The Italian race of the European honey bee is A. m. ligustica, the Carniolan race is A. m. carnica, and the Caucasian race is A. m. causcasia.
Honeycomb
A honeycomb is a mass of hexagonal wax cells built by commercial and wild honey bees in their nests to contain their larvae and stores of honey and pollen.
Beekeepers may remove the entire honeycomb to harvest honey. Honey bees consume about 8.4 pounds of honey to secrete one pound of wax,[1] so it makes economic sense to return the wax to the hive after harvesting the honey, commonly called "pulling honey" or "robbing the bees" by beekeepers. The structure of the comb may be left basically intact when honey is extracted from it by uncapping and spinning in a centrifugal machine—the honey extractor. Fresh, new comb is sometimes sold and used intact as comb honey, especially if the honey is being spread on bread rather than used in cooking or to sweeten tea.
Broodcomb becomes dark over time, because of the cocoons embedded in the cells and the tracking of many feet, called travel stain by beekeepers when seen on frames of comb honey. Honeycomb in the "supers" that are not allowed to be used for brood (e.g. by the placement of a queen excluder) stays light coloured.
Numerous wasps, especially polistinae and vespinae, construct hexagonal prism packed combs made of paper instead of wax; and in some species (like Brachygastra mellifica), honey is stored in the nest, thus technically forming a paper honeycomb. However, the term "honeycomb" is not often used for such structures.
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