Connected on 2010-11-16 11:45:00
from Sharon, MA, US
- 11:09 am
- Bugscope Teamsample is pumping down
- Bugscope Teamabout to start presets
- 11:15 am
- 11:21 am
- 11:26 am
- Bugscope Teamwe are ready to roll
- 11:35 am
- Bugscope TeamHello!
- Bugscope TeamWelcome back!
- TeacherHi! The kids are still at lunch
- Teachermore like 10
- Bugscope Teamhey we are fine with that -- sounds good!
- 11:40 am
- TeacherYou've got some interesting presets today
- Bugscope TeamI'm sorry we did not have another bee. But this is a very good one.
- Bugscope TeamCate made them.
- Teachercan I see the eye here
- Bugscope Teamthe eye is to the bottom of the screen right now
- Bugscope Teamyou should be able to click on it, and it will center
- Bugscope Teamit's also a preset near the bottom of the list
- TeacherStinger, hamuli, spiracle!
- Bugscope Teamcool
- Bugscope Teamare your bees sleeping through the winter?
- 11:46 am
- TeacherNot yet it was 60 degrees this weekend
- Bugscope Teamoh wow; and you have not suffered from CCD?
- Guestare we looking at the bees eye
Bugscope Teamyes it is very hairy too
- Guestwhy is the eye hairy
- 11:51 am
- Bugscope Teamthe hair may help the bee sense windspeed and direction
- Bugscope Teambecause often with insects, hairs (or 'setae') are sensory in some way
- Bugscope Teambees are very hairy for even a normal insect. Maybe they help with doing their part in pollenating/gathering pollen grains
- Bugscope Teamsome setae (pronounced see-tee) are touch sensory, some are hot/cold sensory, and some sense chemicals in the air -- they are used to smell
- Guestwhat are all those dots on it's eyes?
Bugscope Teamthe dark spots are where some oils dried on the eye. The polygons on the eye are the actual facets of the eye, called ommatidia
- Bugscope Teamthe large eyes like this one are called compound eyes because they are made up of so many little facets, each of which is capable of imaging kind of like one of our eyes
- Bugscope Teambees, wasps, and some other flying insects also have three simple eyes, called ocelli, on the top of the head
- Bugscope Teamthe ocelli help the insect keep oriented with respect to the sun
- 11:56 am
- Guestwhat are you trying to show us?
Bugscope Teamhere are some pollen grains. The spikes help them get caught in the bee hair
- Bugscope Teamwe had saved the location of this place in the memory of the software, but the sample shifted a bit after we made the preset
- Bugscope Teamso we took the mag down a little and located the place we had wanted you to be able to see
- Bugscope Teamah this is better!
- Bugscope Teamall of the pollen is caught in the combs on the bee's hind leg
- Bugscope Teampollen comes in different shapes, of course, depending on the flower from which it originates
- Bugscope Teamthe large diagonal spines we see are what the bee uses to comb the pollen into the basket on the other sides of its legs
- 12:01 pm
- GuestWhat do bees do with the pollen?
Bugscope TeamThey pollenate plants and make food out of it for young bees
- Bugscope Teamthey mix the pollen with nectar and make 'bee bread'
- Bugscope Teamthis is one of the claws
- GuestHow does a queen bee get her eggs
Bugscope Teamfirst when worker bees decide to make a new queen, they choose some larvae and feed them royal jelly to trigger the queen to emerge, one that can lay eggs.
Bugscope Teamunfertilized eggs produce drones, which are the male honey bees. The role of the drone is to fertilize the queen, which is done in flight
- Bugscope Teamthe drones are a little smaller than the queen, and the workers are smaller still
- Bugscope Teamthe worker bees are all female
- 12:07 pm
- Bugscope Teambetween the claws of some insects is a sort of airbag called an 'arolium' that can inflate or shrink in order to help fill a space
- Guest what do they use the claw for
Bugscope Teammany insects have claws, and they use them in a manner similar to way we use our hands; they help them grasp things
- GuestHow do they make royal jelly
Bugscope TeamRoyal jelly is secreted from the glands in the heads of worker bees (the females), and you can actually buy it as a supplement in a vitamin store
- Guestcan the claws hurt you
Bugscope Teamno they are very small, and they don't inject you with venom with them, which is what makes the sting from a bee hurt a lot
- Guestwhy do they kick the drones out
Bugscope Teamin the wintertime, especially, the drones are not as important to the survival of the hive, and they get kicked out, as you said
- 12:12 pm
- Guestcan we see the stinger
- Guestwhy do worker bees die when they sting
Bugscope Teamthey die because their barbed stingers get caught in our skin. When they get caught and pull away, a muscle is ripped out with the stinger, and the bee bleeds to death. The muscle that falls out with the stinger can continue pumping venom into the victim as well
- Bugscope Teambees are said to die only when they sting mammals, which have thick skin; they can sting other bees and not lose their stingers
- Bugscope Teamyou can see that this section of the stinger is not so barbed that it should be hard to pull back out
- Bugscope Teamyou can also see a pollen grain back there to the left
- 12:18 pm
- Guestdoes the hive die if the queen dies
Bugscope Teamnot necessarily. There could be a few eggs left that are young enough to give royal jelly to.
- Guestwhats a stinger made out of ?
Bugscope Teamit is made of chitin -- the same material the exoskeleton is made of, but it is thicker. it is kind of like what our fingernails are made of
- Bugscope Teamwhen the queen dies the other bees can enlarge a normal worker cell and use royal jelly to make that worker become a queen, but she is called an 'emergent' queen and is not as desirable as a queen that was intended to be a queen from the beginning.
- GuestCan a male ever be a queen (king)?
Bugscope Teamno there is no leading male bee. Sorry guys!
- Bugscope Teamif the emergent queen is confronted by a queen bee, they will fight until there is only one left
- 12:24 pm
- Guesthow do the bees know how to do there jobs
Bugscope Teamit seems many of their jobs are predetermined for them before they are born, but once they are born they respond to pheromones - to chemical signals that are detected by the sensors on their antennae - that tell them what to do, and how to behave
- GuestIf the drones get kicked out then how do they make more drones for the spring
Bugscope Teamdrones are the unfertilized eggs, so all they do is make a batch of eggs that aren't fertilized by the drones. It fixes itself really. If there aren't drones, then the queen automatically makes drones because there is nothing to fertilize her
- Bugscope Teamkind of cool really
- Bugscope Teamdrone laying queens may be the death of a colony
- Bugscope Teamfor example if a new queen cannot fly and mate with drones from other colonies in a matter of a few days, she will lay, as Cate says, unfertilized eggs that will become drones
- Guest How many days does it take to go from egg to fully grown
Bugscope Teamqueens are said to take 16 days, drones 24 days, and workers 21 days
- 12:30 pm
- Bugscope Teamthey have pores in their bodies called spiracles that air can enter; inside are tubes called tracheae that take air to the organs within the body.
- GuestHow do insects breath?
Bugscope Teamwe are in the right place, right now, to see how they breathe
Bugscope Teamthere are openings in the exoskeleton in some area of the insect that are connected to the same tube that runs throughout the body, called a trachea.
- Bugscope Teamit is not as efficient as how we breathe, and that is fortunate for us, because if insects could breathe more efficiently they might grow much larger
- Bugscope Teamthere are holes in the openings to keep particles from getting in
Bugscope Teamsorry hairs not holes
- Bugscope Teamsome spiracles have what look like little filters at their entrances
- Bugscope Teaminsects can open and close them, as well
- Guestwhere are the sphericals
Bugscope Teamthey are found on each segment, one on each side, usually
- Bugscope Teamthis is one of them, and as Cate said it has hairs or setae around it that help keep other things from getting in
- Guestwhat is the magnification here
Bugscope Team1547!
- Bugscope Teamthis is a little higher than a normal light microscope can image
- Guestwhat do bees eat
Bugscope Teamthe bees themselves eat nectar from flowers; they feed the young bees pollen mixed with nectar, and they can feed them honey if they thin it down with water
- 12:35 pm
- Bugscope Teambees have good eyes, except they are said not to be able to see the color red, and they find flowers by sight
- Bugscope Teamnow we are looking at the hamuli, which are the hooks that connect the fore- and hindwings together on each side
- Guestwhats the rarest bee species
Bugscope Teamthere's a rare bee species in the middle east that is a type of solitary bee and makes a nest out of flower petals
- Bugscope Teambees and wasps have four wings, but when they fly they clip their wings together so it is like they really have two wings
- Bugscope Teamsome of the rarest bees are attracted only to certain flowers, and if those flowers are no longer around the bees will not survive
- Guestwhats the life span of a bee?
Bugscope Teamthe queen can live 2 to 5 to 7 years, depending on what you read; the drones live maybe 40 days, and the workers live from 1 to 4 months
- Guestwhere are these hooks located
Bugscope TeamI think it is the leading edge of the hindwing.
- 12:41 pm
- GuestWhy do they need to hook their wings together?
Bugscope Teamlikely because when they're not hooked together they are more compact and can fit into a smaller space; still they need to have all of that area of the wing surface to be able to fly.
- Guestwhy do bees make a buzz sound
Bugscope Teamthe rapid wingbeats of many species create wind vibrations that people hear as buzzes. The larger the bee, the slower the wingbeat and the lower the pitch of the resulting buzz.
Bugscope Teamalso bumblebees vibrate their bodies when they are on flowers to shake the pollen off and you can hear the vibrations from that
- Guestwhy do bees flap there wings so fast?
Bugscope Teamit is said that the smaller the insect the faster it beats its wings; bees beat their wings in short, choppy strokes, and they change the way they rotate the wings; but really the rapid motion must give them some advantage in speed and maneuverability
- Guestwhats the name of the rarest bee
Bugscope Teamthe ones Cate described are called Osmia avosetta
- GuestDo bees sleep?
Bugscope Teamthey don't sleep like we do, but they do enter a period of inactivity when they need to rest
- 12:46 pm
- Guestwhy does the queen have to have royal jelly and not just nectar
Bugscope Teamthe royal jelly has chemicals, or hormones, in it that steer the course of the genes into developing a queen rather than a worker
- Guestit is time for us to go back to our classroom
- Guestthanks so much we had a great time and you gave great answers!
- GuestWe learned a lot. Thanks.
- Bugscope Teamthanks for using bugscope today! Hope you had fun looking at our bee today
- Bugscope TeamThank You!
- Bugscope TeamThat was fun!
- Bugscope Teamhttps://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2010-073
- Guestthank you for answering our questions today
- Bugscope TeamBye!
- TeacherThanks so much for accommodating all our classes this year. CCD is not an issue for backyard beekeepers
- Bugscope TeamThat is good news. Thank You, Ms Shapiro!
- Bugscope Teamthat's good to hear
- Bugscope Teamwe are shutting down unless you want to drive around a bit
- Teachergo ahead and shut down
- Bugscope Teamsee you next year!
- Bugscope TeamThanks!
