Connected on 2010-11-09 11:45:00 from Sharon, MA, US
- 11:00am
- Bugscope Team pumping down
- 11:17am
- Bugscope Team now we're making presets
- 11:23am
- 11:28am
- 11:34am
- 11:41am
- Teacher Hi- I'm waiting for the class to come.
- Bugscope Team hello!
- Bugscope Team you may drive now if you wish
- Teacher We are on Heights time here- 3 minutes behind the world
- Bugscope Team ha
- Bugscope Team fine with us
- Teacher Yesterday's session was great. I'm a bee keeper.
- 11:46am
- Bugscope Team oh wow
- Bugscope Team so did you have problems with CCD?
- Bugscope Team yesterday we had an exceptional bee to look at. this one is kind of normal
- Bugscope Team now that they think they've found the cause of CCD
- Teacher The class is here
- Bugscope Team hello everyone!
- Guest hi
- Bugscope Team Yay! Welcome to Bugscope!
- Bugscope Team hi!
- Guest Hi
- Guest hello
- Guest hello dude
- Bugscope Team Hello!
- 11:51am
- Guest Hey
- Guest hey
- Bugscope Team let us know when you have questions
- Guest kk
- Bugscope Team about the samples or the 'scope or what we do when we're not working with Bugscope
- Bugscope Team this is a honeybee, head on
- Guest how are you
Bugscope Team we are doing well, quieter today than yesterday; the sun is out but we work 23 feet underground; still it is nice to know
- Guest who many bees are there in the world
Bugscope Team someone had estimated that there were 60 billion bees in the world
- Guest how big is a honey bee
Bugscope Team they're kind of small and compact, maybe a little more than a centimeter long
- Guest Are those the eyes
Bugscope Team yes those are compound eyes, with many tiny facets called ommatidia
- Guest How big are the eyes
Bugscope Team looks like about a millimeter in diameter
- Guest how big is the queen bee?
Bugscope Team the queen bee is larger and longer, maybe twice the size
- Guest what are the dots on the eyes
Bugscope Team the dots are the facets of the eye -- the lenses -- called ommatidia
- 11:56am
- Guest do you know the name of the biggest bug in the united states
Bugscope Team the elephant stag beetle is the heaviest in the US, weighing around 30-40 grams and get as big as 60mm
- Guest what is the x on the eyes
Bugscope Team the x is where a couple of setae ('hairs') or bristles are lying on the eye
- Bugscope Team the little rounded things we see now are mold spores
- Bugscope Team we can see the ommatidia better now
- Guest why do they have hair on thier eyes
Bugscope Team we think the hair helps the bee sense wind speed and direction when it flies
- Bugscope Team it is also likely, I think, that the hair on the bee's body 1) helps it collect pollen and 2) helps it regulate its temperature
- Guest what are the circles on the eyes
Bugscope Team the little balls are mold spores. The hexagons are ommatidia
- Bugscope Team you can see that some of the ommatidia have scratches in them
- 12:02pm
- Guest why are scrapes on the eyes?
Bugscope Team those are scratches from either getting into fights or maybe from being on the ground
- Bugscope Team having compound eyes is an advantage because it allows the insect to have better peripheral vision as well as providing very fast updates on what is in the visual field
- Guest what color are the eyes
Bugscope Team I think they are basically black, perhaps dark brown
- Guest how
Bugscope Team if you have many eyes, many lenses, and they fit in a dome shape, you can see around you much better without moving your head; and if you have lots and lots of lenses, and each functions like a little receptor, you can more quickly register changes in what is around you. meaning it is hard to swat a bee, or fly, or many insects
- Guest what is that above the eye
Bugscope Team the tube-like thing is one of the antennae
- Bugscope Team the antennae are jointed so they will be flexible -- they can move around
- 12:07pm
- Guest why arent the antennas straight
Bugscope Team the segments you see in the antenna allow it to bend around, so they can probably make them straight if they wanted to, but it died with them curling under probably because it was drying out
- Guest why are there lines on the antennae
Bugscope Team the horizontal lines we see are the edges of the segments; now we also see tiny setae and sensilla
- Guest what are the dots on the antennae
- Bugscope Team now we see the setae, which are little bristles and may sense touch, or hot/cold; and we see those long slot-like places with smooth surfaces, which are the sensilla
- Guest whats sensilla
Bugscope Team they are chemoreceptors. they sense hormones or smells. chemicals in the air
- Bugscope Team the round things, again, are mold spores that probably showed up after the bee died
- Bugscope Team this is one of the six legs -- all insects have six legs. and many of them have claws much like this.
- 12:13pm
- Bugscope Team you can see that some of the setae on the claw are likely mechanosensory -- they let the bee know when it is touching something, or when something is in its grasp
- Guest can they pinch
Bugscope Team yes but they are so little that it wouldn't really hurt. more like tickle
- Guest if they land on you will the claw hurt you
- Guest are the claws sharp
Bugscope Team yes we can see that they are fairly sharp, but like Cate says they are very small
- Bugscope Team the claws are only about 200 micrometers -- a fifth of a millimeter -- long
- Guest why dose the claw look like it is tucked in something
Bugscope Team the center part of the claw, or between the sharp parts, is a pad that helps the bee stick to surfaces; and the claw is connected to the 'wrist' -- to the tarsus -- on the inside
- Bugscope Team inside the shaft of the tarsus is a tendon that makes the claw open or close. it is called an 'unguitractor.'
- 12:19pm
- Guest what part are we looking at
Bugscope Team in the middle of where we are looking now is the edge of the wings, and we see where they attach -- where the hind- and forewing clip together when the bee flies. to the left of that is one of the legs, and to the left and under that is the abdomen.
- Bugscope Team those curved things are called 'hamuli,' and they are the clips that hold the wings together in flight
- Bugscope Team bees, wasps, and flying ants (which you don't see often, and are males) have hamuli to clip their four wings into two for flying
- Bugscope Team A honeybee can fly 24 km in an hour at a speed of 15 mph. Its wings beat 200 times per second or 12,000 beats per minute.
- 12:25pm
- Guest what are the wings mad of
Bugscope Team they are made of chitin, which is like what your fingernails are made of, and it is also what the exoskeleton -- the shell of the insect -- is made of
- Bugscope Team chitin is a tough but flexible protein, like what a shrimp shell is made of
- Guest why do they have four wings
Bugscope Team that is a good question, and I am not sure of the answer. It may be that millions of years ago it was advantageous to have four wings -- for example, dragonflies have four wings and they are among the fastest flying insects
Bugscope Team here's a guess: when the wings are unhooked, the bees can easily fold the wings away, and when they fly they hook them together. Maybe they need nice big wings to hold up their body weight, but the big wings would get in the way in their hive. So that is just the way they evolved over time.
- Guest What is that line next to the hamuli
Bugscope Team to the left was a line of fungal hyphae -- like the branches or roots of the fungus as it grows
- Bugscope Team I like Cate's answer to the four wing question. And bees certainly do have lot of weight to carry.
- Bugscope Team this is a pollen grain, which in this case looks much like a mold spore but is larger
- Guest whats that circle
- Bugscope Team it is only 15 or 20 micrometers in diameter, about as wide as 7 to 10 bacteria end to end
- Bugscope Team this is resting inside the ridges of a moth antenna
- 12:30pm
- Bugscope Team a micrometer is also called a micron, and it is one thousandth the length of a millimeter
- Bugscope Team a micron, or micrometer, is one millionth the length of a meter
- Guest what are the dots on the pollen
Bugscope Team maybe they make the pollen sticky so that it can easily be carried on an insect
- Bugscope Team it's fun to be able to see these tiny things, and we do not always know just what they do
- Bugscope Team the dots on the pollen grain are smaller than a micron -- they are in the nanoscale
- Guest Thank you i hope you learn more
- Bugscope Team a nanometer is one one thousandth of a micrometer, which is one one thousandth of a millimeter, which is one one thousandth of a meter
- Guest Thank you for sharing this wonderful information with us.
- Bugscope Team so a nanometer is one billionth of a meter
- Bugscope Team Thank You!
- Guest we have to go now,thank you
- Bugscope Team see you next time!
- Guest Thank you for teaching us the different parts of a bee.
- Guest Thank you for replying to all of our questionfor so long
- Bugscope Team cool! brb
- 12:36pm
- Bugscope Team gatemouth
- 12:41pm
- Guest Hi! We cant wait to begin!
- Bugscope Team good job driving, and focussing!
- Bugscope Team Hi!
- Bugscope Team please let us know whenever you have questions!
- Bugscope Team this is a good view of the compound eye, and to the far right you can see some of the detail of the antenna
- Guest What are those hexagons on the eyes?
Bugscope Team the hexagons are the individual facets of the eye -- the lenses. and they are called ommatidia.
- Guest what is the x on the eye
Bugscope Team the x is a place where a couple of bristles, or setae, have fallen onto the eye
- Bugscope Team insects have lots of setae. the setae are sensory -- they let the insect know if something is touching it, and some of them can sense smells, and some of them can sense hot/cold
- 12:46pm
- Bugscope Team insects have an external skeleton -- an 'exoskeleton -- whereas we have our skeleton on the inside.
- Guest do bees have hair on their eyes
Bugscope Team some bees have a lot of long hair on their eyes. the hair may help them gauge wind speed, or the direction of the wind. it may also help them regulate their temperature
- Bugscope Team see how the mandibles -- the jaws -- open from side to side like a gate?
- Guest what are those claws under there eyes
- Bugscope Team those are the mandibles -- the jaws
- Bugscope Team below the mandibles we see a mess of fuzz, which is where the tongue is, but it is covered with mold
- Bugscope Team the little jointed things on either side of the mass of mold are the palps, which help manipulate and taste food -- like the nectar bees like to eat
- 12:51pm
- Bugscope Team there are four palps. and we see, to the left and right, larger jointed things. those are the tarsi on the forelegs. tarsi are what the jointed 'forearms' are called, and they have claws at the ends.
- Bugscope Team here is one of the claws. in its center is a sticky pad that helps the bee stick to surfaces
- Bugscope Team you can see tiny bristles on the claws themselves
- Guest what is that nail thing
Bugscope Team the curved thing? that is a claw
- Bugscope Team this poor bee has a lot of mold on it that formed most likely after it died
- 12:56pm
- Guest what are those things sticking out of the claw
Bugscope Team some of the things sticking out of the claw are comparable to 'trigger' hairs'; they help the insect sense when something is within its grasp
- Guest What's the fuzz in the middle of the middle
Bugscope Team that is kind of dried from when the bee was alive, and shrunken; it is the pad that helps the bee stick to surfaces
- Guest can the claws hurt us
Bugscope Team no they are very small to us and would most likely give us a tickling sensation
- Guest what are the claws used for
Bugscope Team they are used kind of the same way we use our hands -- to grip things, and to help climb
- Bugscope Team the bigger wasps' claws like the cicada killer, might hurt us a little more
- Guest why is the claw set into something
Bugscope Team the claw is at the end of one of the arms, and inside the arm is a tendon called an 'unguitractor' that makes the claw close or open.
- Guest what is the magnification on this picture
Bugscope Team right now we are at 680x
- Guest why are there hexagons by the claws
Bugscope Team those are the shape of the cuticle, which is more flexible thin chitin; you see that in ants as well
- 1:02pm
- Guest how is the claw attached
Bugscope Team it is attached to the cuticle, to the chitin, and inside where we cannot see it is attached to the unguitractor
- Bugscope Team the little round things we see now are mold spores
- Guest are the circles pollen grain
Bugscope Team they are similar in appearance to pollen, but they are mold spores
- Guest what are we looking at here
Bugscope Team this is a spur at the 'elbow' of the forearm, and it has a built-in 'comb' that the bee uses to brush dirt off of its antennae. there is one of these combs on either side. ants have the same thing.
- Guest is there pollen in precsets
- Guest is there pollen in the precects
- 1:07pm
- Bugscope Team there is a kind of sad-looking pollen grain in the ridges of the antenna of a moth
- Bugscope Team we did not find pollen on the bee today
- Guest what is that circle in the middle
- Bugscope Team this is the only pollen grain we could find today sorry
- Bugscope Team it looks like a fortune cookie
- Bugscope Team most likely because it dried out
- Bugscope Team this is magnified 11,000 times
- Bugscope Team the pollen grain is 15 or 20 micrometers wide
- Guest why are there bumps
Bugscope Team then bumps probably help the pollen grain stick to things, like insects that can carry it to other flowers
- 1:12pm
- Guest how long do bees live
Bugscope Team a queen bee lives on average 2 to 5 years; a drone, which is larger than a worker bee, lives 40 to 50 days; and a worker bee lives 1 to 4 months.
- Bugscope Team a queen bee is larger than the other bees but not that much bigger than a drone
- Guest what is it
Bugscope Team this is where the hind- and forewings connect when the bee flies
- Bugscope Team the curved clips we see are called 'hamuli,' and they hook the wings together
- Guest when does it hook the wings together and why does it hook the wings together
Bugscope Team it hooks the wings together when it flies. I think they hook the wings together to make the wingspan bigger to help carry their heavy bodies (especially with bumble bees). When not flying, they can unhook them and fold them in towards their bodies, making them more compact
- 1:18pm
- Guest what are the wings made out of
Bugscope Team the wings are made of chitin, which is a flexible protein like what our fingernails are made of. the exoskeleton is also made of chitin.
- Guest do bees mosty walk or fly?
Bugscope Team certainly they fly further than they walk; I think they fly more
- Guest how big are the wings
Bugscope Team I think each wing is about a centimeter long and 4 or 5 mm wide.
- Guest Thank you very much for answering our questions!
- Guest I had alot of fun learning this muck about bees!
- Bugscope Team Thank You!
- Guest we have to go
- Guest thank you for every thing
- Guest We learned alot thank you very much
- Bugscope Team Bye! Thank you for connecting with us, and see you next year!
- Bugscope Team https://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2010-072
- Bugscope Team below is the link to your member page
- Bugscope Team that's great! Thanks for joining us!
Bugscope Team glad you learned a lot today from us
- Guest Thanks Scot and Cate I'll see you next week for the last session
