Connected on 2012-11-15 09:00:00
from Norfolk, Massachusetts, United States
- 7:16 am
- Bugscope Teamthis morning's sample is now pumping down
- 7:24 am
- Bugscope Team2.7 x 10-4
- Bugscope Teamwe are going for 1.3 x 10-4
- Bugscope Team2.5
- Bugscope Team2.0
- Bugscope Teambecause the samples are fairly fresh, they are a bit juicy, and it takes a while for them to pump down
- Bugscope Team1.9
- 7:33 am
- Bugscope Team1.7
- Bugscope Teamyesterday we had juicy samples as well, and the vacuum jumped up and down as they outgassed
- Bugscope Teamtoday the vacuum is steadily getting better
- Bugscope Team1.6
- 7:39 am
- Bugscope Team1.5
- Bugscope Teamgood morning!
- Bugscope Teamwelcome to Bugscope!
- Bugscope Teamwe do not have presets quite yet because the vacuum is not quite adequate
- TeacherHi- its Maddy- just logging in early and setting up student stations
Bugscope Teamcool!
- Bugscope TeamI am close to being able to start making presets
- Bugscope Teamit is terrible to be playing it so close
- 7:44 am
- Bugscope Teamyesterday was crazy
- Bugscope Team...
- Bugscope Team....
- Bugscope Team...
- Bugscope Team....
- Bugscope Team...
- Bugscope Team....
- TeacherNo worries about time-We will be with you for 2 hours, same presets different classes
- 7:49 am
- 7:55 am
- 8:00 am
- GuestHi. I'm showing my class Bugscope to prep for our Monday session.
- TeacherWe are ready are you?
- Bugscope TeamHi Mrs V!
- 8:05 am
- Bugscope TeamYes we are ready, Thank YOu
- Bugscope Teamplease let us know when you have questions
- TeacherUnable to select a preset
Bugscope Teamplease try again
- Bugscope Teamthis is the head of the honeybee drone
- Bugscope Teamit has very large eyes and is also larger than the workers
- Studentwhats that bubble
Bugscope Teamthat is the compound eye, with thousands of tiny facets called ommatidia, and also lots and lots of setae, which look like hair
- Bugscope Teamthe setae on the eye are not branched, but the setae covering the rest of the exoskeleton are branched
- Bugscope Teamthe setae on the eye are thought to be mechanosensory, allowing the bee to sense wind speed and direction
- Bugscope Teammechanosensory is touch and wind sensory
- 8:10 am
- Bugscope Teamyou can see that some of the setae are broken off
- Bugscope Teamyou can also see the ommatidia now
- Bugscope Teamthe ommatidia are individual lenses of the compound eye
- Studentwhat is a setae
Bugscope Teamsetae are what we call the things that look like hairs
- Bugscope Teamsetae (singular is seta) can be thermosensory (heat sensing), chemosensory (smell), and/or mechanosensory, for touch.
- Bugscope Teamwhen we look at the moth we will see lots of scales, and scales are also setae, modified so that they look like tiny feathers
- Bugscope Teamthey are hexagona;
Bugscope Teamthat should be 'hexagonal'
- Studentwhy are they shaped in hexagons
Bugscope Teama hexagonal shape is the very best shape for closepacking of essentially round objects in three dimensions, like stacking oranges in a grocery store
- Studentdoes it harm them when the setae breaks off
Bugscope Teamnot really, but they lose some of their sensing ability
- 8:15 am
- Studentis the comb shaped in hexagons because of the eyes?
Bugscope Teamit is a kind of coincidence; it is just the best way to stack round things closely
- Studentwhat is the dusty stuff on the eye?
Bugscope Teamit is dirt and debris
- Studentwhy is a drones eye bigger
Bugscope Teamit may be because the drone needs to be able to see a bit better when it flies
- Bugscope Teamyou can see all of the stumps of the broken off setae here
- Studentdo they see in color?
Bugscope Teamyes but only certain colors; they do not see red, for example
- Bugscope Teammost colors look about the same -- a range of purple to blue colors will all look blue
- Bugscope Teamyellow, orange, and green all look kind of yellow
- Studentcan they see UV colors
Bugscope TeamI am not sure. I think some bees can.
- Studentcan bees tell if it is day or night
- Bugscope Teamyes I just looked it up -- bees can see in UV
- Studentdo bees see colors we can not see
Bugscope Teamyes they can -- we cannot see UV without aid, like with a blacklight
- Student.
- Studenthow large are the facets
Bugscope Teamyou can see the scale at the lower left on the screen; it reads 50 microns. it looks like the facets are about 30 microns (micrometers) wide
- 8:21 am
- Bugscope Teama micron is the same as a micrometer. micro in this case means one millionth; a micrometer is one millionth of a meter
- Studentwhat's a tarsi?
Bugscope Teamtarsi are what the forelimb segments are called; the last 5 or so segments of the arm
- Bugscope Teambacteria are often 2 microns long, or 2 micrometers; a micrometer is one thousandth of a millimeter
- Bugscope Teamall of the tarsal joints we see give the limb flexibility -- a better ability to bend
- Bugscope Teamthe claw is at the end of the final tarsomere, the final tarsus
- Bugscope Teamthere is another preset of the claw from the other side
- Bugscope Teamthe honeybees are small compared to the bumble bee
- Studentwhy are the segments shaped like arrows
Bugscope Teamthat is cool, isn't it? that shape seems to be best for giving the limb the most flexibility in movement
- Bugscope Teamthis is one of the claws from the front
- Bugscope Teamwe can see lots of bristles that are also mechanosensory -- they allow the bee to feel when it is grasping something
- 8:27 am
- Studentwhy is a claw hooked
Bugscope Teamthe hook shape gives the claw more strength, like when you bend a piece of paper and it can support something better that way
- Studentwhat do they use the claw for?
Bugscope Teamthey use their claws much like we use our hands -- to grasp and hold onto things
- Studentwhats in the middle between the claw
Bugscope Teamwe can see bristles that bend when something is caught between the claws and allow the bee to sense when it is touching and grasping something
- Studentis there setae on the bee's claw?
Bugscope Teamyes there are
- Bugscope Teamthere is also a portion of the claw that is hard to see but is sticky
- Studenthow long is a bee's leg?
Bugscope Teammaybe it is an average or 5 mm long
- Studentwhats the claw made out of
Bugscope Teamit is made of chitin, which is a hardened protein kind of like our fingernails
- Studenthow large is the pollen baskit
Bugscope Teamit is 2 or 3 millimeters long, on the hindlimbs; I did not see any good ones this morning
- Studenthow much pollen can a pollen basket hold?
Bugscope Teamthe bees really can pile it on; it looks like maybe 5 microliters, hard to tell -- like a small droplet of water in size
- Bugscope Teambees and other insects, as well as many other arthropods, have exoskeletons made of that same protein -- chitin
- 8:32 am
- Studenthow many joints does a bees leg have
Bugscope Teamhaha I am not sure; about eight?
- Studentwhy are bee's covered in body hair
Bugscope Teamthe body hair helps them hold onto air when they fly -- it gives them a kind of bouyancy in the air; but it also helps them keep their temperature stable; it also, of course, helps them feel their environment when the hairs connect to nerves beneath the cuticle, or chitin
- Bugscope Teamthis is cool
- Bugscope Teamnow we see four or five segments of the moth's antenna
- Bugscope Teamthe things that look like ruffles potato chips are scales
- Bugscope Teammoths, butterflies, silverfish, mosquitoes, and very few other insects are covered with scales, which are actually modified setae
- Bugscope Teamalso, most insects are very sensitive to smells in the environment
- StudentWhy do the antenna need to bend?
Bugscope Teamit is good to have them be flexible for flying, but they also need to be bendable so the insect can touch things with them and collect chemical information that way as well
- 8:38 am
- Studentwe see a circle, what is it
Bugscope Teamthat looks like some kind of debris, or dirt; you could go to a higher magnification to see it better
- Bugscope Teambecause it is so small, although it looks kind of like pollen, I think it is a mold spore
- Studentwhat are the lines seperating theantennae
Bugscope Teamif I understand which lines you are talking about, those were the borders of the indvidual segments of the antenna
- Bugscope Teamthis is cool
- Bugscope Teamwe know that these are pollen from a stargazer lily
- Bugscope Teampollen comes in lots of shapes and different sizes
- Studentis this more than one grain of pollen?
- Bugscope Teamhere we see three grains together
- StudentWhere the pollen?
Bugscope Teamit came from some flowers someone brought us a long time ago
- Studentwhy does the pollen have ridges
Bugscope Teamthe ridges help make it stronger, and they also help it cling to things like bee setae
- 8:44 am
- Bugscope Teampretty nice looking
- Bugscope Team20 microns on the scale at the bottom of the screen -- that is 10 bacteria long
- Studentwhy is there so much pollen in the summer?
Bugscope Teamin the winter many plants are dead or dormant, so there are no flowers
- StudentWhats the line connecting the ridges
Bugscope Teamthat looks like web, almost; we are not sure what it is
- Bugscope Teamthe bee might have sting someone since it's missing its stinger
- Studentdoes the hair stick to the pollen or does the pollen stick to the hair
Bugscope Teamhaha. Both!
Bugscope Teambee setae are known for having multiply forked tips, and it is said to help pollen cling to them
- Bugscope Teamsome pollen grains like ragweed are great at sticking to anything. It has a lot of spikes to make it easy to latch on anything
- Studentdo young workers have stingers
Bugscope Teamyes they do
- Bugscope Teamall workers are females and are made from fertilized eggs. Drones are males and are made from unfertilized eggs. So if the queen ran out of males to mate with, she would start making males
- Bugscope Teamworkers have barbed stingers that do not get stuck in other insects when they sting them, but they get stuck in mammalian (like humans) skin because it is thick
- Bugscope Teamthe queen has a stinger as well, but it does not have barbs like those of the workers
- Bugscope Teamthe drones are males, and males do not have stingers
- Bugscope Teamso you can tell a drone because it is larger, it has a rounder abdomen with no stinger, and it has larger eyes
- 8:49 am
- StudentWhat part is underneth that hole
Bugscope Teamthe whole thing we are looking at is the abdomen
- StudentWhat is the stinger made out of?
Bugscope Teamit is made of thick chitin
- Studenthow is the queen bees stinger diffrent
Bugscope Teamit is smooth, compared to the barbed stingers of the workers
- Bugscope Teama stinger is also, in many insects, an ovipositor
- Bugscope Teamchitin is what their exoskeleton is made of. Their wings are made of it too, but a slightly thinner version
- Bugscope Teaman ovum is an egg, and eggs are also called ova; so an ovipositor is a egg depositor
- StudentWhat are those little bumps
Bugscope Teamthose are pores where setae were sticking out. At some point, maybe after it died, the hairs fell off
- StudentHow long is the stinger on the worker bee
Bugscope TeamI think it is 2 to 4 millimeters long -- long enough to stick in our skin
- Studentwich sing is stonger a queen bee or a worker bees sting
Bugscope TeamI am sorry -- I don't know
- GuestHi everyone! I am showing my class the Bugscope website in preparation for our session Monday. We are really looking forward to it! Thanks for letting us observe today. You are all asking great questions.
Bugscope TeamHi Mrs V!
- StudentWhat is this
Bugscope Teamthis is the junction between two wings on one side of the bee -- the fore- and the hindwing
- Bugscope Teamthe curvy things we see running down the center of this view are called hamuli
- Bugscope Teamthese hook the wings together when the bees want to fly, and then they can detatch them to fold their wings in
- 8:54 am
- Bugscope Teamone big pair of wings help support their body better
- Bugscope Teamif bees lived in open spaces with lots of room they might not need to have four wings, but when they live in very small spaces it is helpful to be able to fold their wings up
- StudentWhat causes ccd?
Bugscope Teamsome people think that it is because pesticides are used on corn so insects will not eat the crops, and when corn is made into high-fructose corn syrup, it retains the pesticide and maybe even concentrates it. Honeybees in traveling colonies are often fed high-fructose corn syrup, and the pesticide residue affects them.
- 9:00 am
- Bugscope Teamthat is said to be one potential factor in CCD; not the only factor
- Studentdoes the coler have any significance
Bugscope Teamnot sure what you mean...
- Studentthe coler of a bee
Bugscope Teamdoes the color of the bee have any significance in CCD? I don't know; if you have heard something about that I would like to know about it
- Studentthank you for your time alot
- StudentWe learned a lot
Bugscope Teamthat's great to hear!
- Studentthank you for your time we leand a lot
- Studentthank you for letting us use your microscope
- Bugscope TeamThank You for connecting with us today!
- StudentThanks for answering our questions. I have one more but not enough time to say it
Bugscope Teamwhat is it?
- Studentg'bye
- StudentThank you for your time
- Bugscope TeamBye!
- Studentgood by
- Bugscope Teambye
- StudentThank You
- Bugscope Teamyou had very good questions, and we enjoyed working with you!
- 9:11 am
- Bugscope Teamclaw!
- Studentit looks like a crab claw
- Bugscope Teamyes it does!
- Studentcrab
- Bugscope Teamthere is a tendon inside the part just past the claw that pulls to close and releases to open the claw
- Studentwhat are the hairs
Bugscope Teamthe smallest hairs are microsetae; the larger hairs are bristles and mechanosensory setae
- Studentis the leg cut off?
Bugscope Teamno this is the tip of this leg
- Studentwhat is the spiky stuff?
Bugscope Teamthose are hairs, or setae. They help the insect feel what is going on around it
- Bugscope Teamthe setae, or bristles, in the center of the claw opening, are to allow the bee to sense when something is in its grasp
- Studentdo the spikes hurt?
Bugscope Teamthey won't hurt us. They are too small. They don't hurt the insect either
- Studentwhat is the claw used for?
Bugscope Teamit's kind of like the same things we use our hands for - to grasp and hold and cling to surfaces
- Studenthow long can the claws grow
Bugscope Teamthey don't grow anymore once the bee is an adult; in some insects they can be much longer
- 9:16 am
- Studentdo the spikes get pollen on them
Bugscope Teamyes they do! some hairs are great for getting pollen to stick to them, and sometimes the pollen like to stick to anything. Other things like to stick to the hairs sometimes, like dirt
- Studenthow is this formed?
Bugscope Teamjust like with people and other animals, other insects, genes control how body parts are formed
- StudentDoe anything on it's body use it to smell?
Bugscope Teamyes for sure! some of the tiny setae we see are chemosensory
- StudentWhy is the eye so scary
- StudentWhy is the claw look so spiky
Bugscope Teamit is kind of spiky...
- StudentDoes the queen bee do as much work as the worker bee?
- Studentdoes the honeycomb shape have anything to do with the bees?
- StudentWhat makes the eye so hairy?
- StudentIt's so big!!!
- StudentHow is a queen born
Bugscope Teamthe queen becomes a queen when she is fed a greater quantity of what is called Royal Jelly\
- Studentwhat would happen when the queen dies
Bugscope Teamif the bees sensed the queen was dying they usually prepare another fertilized egg to be queen by giving the egg/pupa lots of royal jelly. If the queen suddenly dies without warning, the bees will try to throw a bunch of royal jelly on a ffertilized egg and hope she becomes a queen. If she doesn't become a queen, then the colony won't last very long without a queen
- Studentthis is very gross!
- StudentAre those hairs on the eyes?
- Studentwhy is the eye hairy
Bugscope Teamit is hairy for thermoregulation, and also for sensing wind speed and direction
- Studenthow do they pick out the queen
Bugscope Teamthere are always larvae that may be turned into queens if the queen dies, so they are kind of in waiting
- Studenthow fast can they fly?
- StudentWhat does ommatidia mean?
Bugscope Teamommatidia are the individual facets of the eyes, individual lenses
- StudentDo drone bees get kicked out for a reason?
- Studenthow many lenses in the eye
Bugscope Teamthere are thousands, probably 5 to 7000
- Studenthow do they get hexagon shaped eyes
Bugscope Teamhexagon is the best shape to fit the curvature of something round, so to fit the maximum number of ommatidia in that space you need hexagons
- 9:21 am
- Studenthow many bees are in the world
Bugscope Teamthere are said to be 20,000 species of bees in the world
- StudentWhy does the eye have hexagons on it ?
Bugscope Teamoops Cate just answered that, below
- Studentwhy do they need a queen
Bugscope Teamthe queen is responsible for laying the eggs, from 1000 to 2000 per day
- Studentcan a little bee sting?
Bugscope Teamyes
- StudentDid the queen lay drone eggs?
Bugscope Teamyes. Drones are unfertilized eggs
- StudentWhy are queen bees the biggest bee in the colonie?
Bugscope Teamthe queen has to be large so she can hold all of the eggs inside her and then lay them
- StudentHow many eggs does the queen lay in a day?
Bugscope Team1000 to 2000
- StudentWho makes the honey ?
Bugscope Teamthe workers do
- Studentdo quueens leave the colony?
Bugscope Teamsometimes when they are young they fly out; sometimes they do not come back, and they establish another colony somewhere else
- StudentWhat does decenoic mean?
Bugscope TeamI believe it means 'ten,' as in decenoic acid
- Studentwhere do royal jelly come from
Bugscope Teamit is said to come from the salivary glands of worker bees
- Studenthow does a queen be get her unusual size?
Bugscope Teamshe grows because she is fed a lot, and also because her genetic makeup allows it
- Studentwhen the bees put royal jelly onan egg ho does it change the egg
Bugscope Teamit activates genes that might normally be dormant
- 9:27 am
- StudentWhat is that?
Bugscope Teamthis is a cluster of pollen grains. The background is carbon tape
- Studenthow many bees can be in a colony
Bugscope Teamin the Spring there can be 10,000 to 15,000, and in the Summer there can be 50,000 to 60,000.
- Studentwhat is the average life span of a queen bee
Bugscope TeamI think it is usually said to be 4 to 5 years
- Studentwhy does that look like a brain
Bugscope Teamthe surface has those cool raised structures on it that make it look superficially like a brain
- Studentdo queen bees eat anything other then royal jelly
Bugscope Teamas far as I know no they don't
Bugscope Teamone reference I read says that once they become queens they are fed nectar
- Studentwhat is the average lifespan of the drone bee
Bugscope Teamabout 50 days
- Bugscope Teamworkers are said to live 1 to 4 months
- Studentdoes the queen bee do as much work as a worker bee
Bugscope Teamshe does a different kind of work and is also quite busy
- Student;
- 9:32 am
- Studentwhy do bees collect pollen
Bugscope Teamthey eat the pollen for food
- Studentis pollen used to make honey?
Bugscope Teamno the nectar they collect from the plants are
- Studenthow does the pollen wear off on the next flower without the bee knowing?
Bugscope Teamthe pollen is all over the bee, not just in its pollen basket; so it is not aware of every grain of pollen in its hair
- Studenthow big is a queen bees heart?
Bugscope TeamI have not found a good answer for that
Bugscope TeamI imagine it could be a millimeter or so long
- Studenthow big is the bee when it is first born
Bugscope Teamit is almost the full size it will become, but it is small and folded up\
- Studenthow many times a day to bees go out to collect nectar
Bugscope Teamit depends on the weather; I don't think they stop, on a good flying day
- 9:38 am
- StudentWhy do bees like sugars?
Bugscope Teamit's almost a chicken and egg story; the flowers produce nectar, which is sugary, to attract the bees; but also, sugars have calories in them that get turned into energy
- Studentwhat happens when they run out of their supply of pollen? can't find any more pollen?
Bugscope Teamthey travel in search of it; in some cases the queen will fly out for new territory
- Studentis bee honey bee vomit
Bugscope Teamkind of. They do have to regurgitate the nectar a few times to get it to honey consistency. It is stored in a special second stomach for this
- Studenthow big do the bees wings get?
Bugscope Teamthey seem to be 9 mm to a centimeter in honeybees, but there are lots of species of bees, and bumble bees are larger, for example, and have larger wings
- Bugscope Teamthere is a Bombyx pensylvanicus bumble bee on the stub today
- Student How fast can honeybees fly
Bugscope TeamI have read 15 to 22 miles per hour\
- StudentWhy do the wings have hairs and spikes
Bugscope Teamthe smallest hairs are microsetae, which help give the bee a better ability to hold onto the air in flight; they also keep the wings from sticking to a flat surface when they are wet; the curved things we see now are hooks that help hold the wings together in flight
- 9:43 am
- Studentcan you see threw the wings
Bugscope Teamyes you can
- Studenthow thin are the wings
Bugscope Teamthey are on the order of 30 microns, probably; a micron is a thousandth of a millimeter; a micron is also called a micrometer, which means 'a millionth of a meter'
- StudentWhat do the wings consist of.
Bugscope Teamthey are made of chitin, the same as the rest of teh exoskeleton; it is a tough protein similar to our fingernails, and also like a shrimp shell
- StudentHow do you know all these things about bees
Bugscope Teamafter years of doing bugscope and talking with other full entomologists Scot and I are like junior entomologists at this point
Bugscope Teamhaha That is right!
- Bugscope Teambees and wasps have four wings; flies have only two wings
- Bugscope Teambees and wasps both connect their hind- and forewings together when they fly
- Studentdo the wings brake easily
- Bugscope Teamthat is what the hamuli are for
- Bugscope Teamthis is interesting
- StudentWhy can a queen bee keep stinging without dying.
Bugscope Teamthe queen bee does not have barbs on its stinger like the worker bees do
- Bugscope Teamif the stinger is not barbed, it can be inserted and taken out without getting stuck
- 9:48 am
- Bugscope Teamwhen a worker bee stings a mammal, which has fairly thick skin, the barbs bet caught in the skin and the stinger plus the venom sac get torn away
- Studenthow big is a stinger
Bugscope Teamit can be a few millimeters long, and in some insects much longer, as in centimeters, depending on what it is going to sting
- Studentwhy do drones not have stingers?
Bugscope Teamstingers are really ovipositors. Males don't do lay eggs
- StudentWhat are barbs.
Bugscope Teambarbs are sharp elements that stick out of the shaft of the stinger; they help cut on the way in but make it harder to pull out
- Bugscope Teaman ovipositor is used for laying eggs, and many insects have a combination ovipositor/stinger, but they are all females
- StudentWhat are the circles
Bugscope Teamthose are pores where hairs used to be but at some point, most likely after it died, they fell off
- StudentWhat is the thickness of the stinger
Bugscope Teamit varies, of course, but it is likely 50 to 75 microns, close to the width of a human hair
- Studentdoes the queen bee feel any pain
Bugscope Teamyes she does; feeling pain is good because it warns the animal that what it is doing might be dangerous
- 9:55 am
- Studentwhat is the difference between a worker bee's stinger and a queen bee's stinger?
Bugscope Teamthe queen bee's stinger has to be large enough to lay eggs, and that is by far its primary purpose; it does not have barbs or spines on it that hold it in. the worker's stinger is used to sting, of course; it does not lay eggs; the worker can sting other insects without dying, but when it stings a mammal, like us, the stinger gets caught in the skin and the whole apparatus gets pulled out of the bee, so the bee bleeds to death
- Bugscope Teama barb is what you find on a fish hook; it goes in easily but does not come back out so easily
- Studentwhat is the average life of a drone bee
Bugscope Teamabout 40 to 50 days
- Studentdo the drones make milk substace in there glands?
Bugscope TeamI don't think so; they do not collect nectar or pollen, although they feed on it
- Bugscope Teamcool a stinger!
- StudentThanks for your help thanks for your time
- StudentThanks for your help!
- Studentthanks! i learned a lot!
- Bugscope Teamthe stinger has different arts that help it cut into your skin by sliding side by side
- Studentthank you for all of your information on bees
- Studentthanks for your help!
- 10:00 am
- TeacherThanks! I'll see you tomorrow
- Studentthanks!
- StudentThanks for everything!
- Studenthow do the drones get is names?
Bugscope Teamit is an old word and may be an imitation of the noise they make when they fly, but it is also said to mean idle or lazy
- Bugscope Teamthanks for all your great questions. Hope you have fun
- Bugscope TeamThank You All!
- TeacherOne more session for us tomoorow have a good day-Maddy