Connected on 2010-11-16 11:45:00 from Sharon, MA, US
- 11:09am
- Bugscope Team sample is pumping down
- Bugscope Team about to start presets
- 11:15am
- 11:21am
- 11:26am
- Bugscope Team we are ready to roll
- 11:35am
- Bugscope Team Hello!
- Bugscope Team Welcome back!
- Teacher Hi! The kids are still at lunch
- Teacher more like 10
- Bugscope Team hey we are fine with that -- sounds good!
- 11:40am
- Teacher You've got some interesting presets today
- Bugscope Team I'm sorry we did not have another bee. But this is a very good one.
- Bugscope Team Cate made them.
- Teacher can I see the eye here
- Bugscope Team the eye is to the bottom of the screen right now
- Bugscope Team you should be able to click on it, and it will center
- Bugscope Team it's also a preset near the bottom of the list
- Teacher Stinger, hamuli, spiracle!
- Bugscope Team cool
- Bugscope Team are your bees sleeping through the winter?
- 11:46am
- Teacher Not yet it was 60 degrees this weekend
- Bugscope Team oh wow; and you have not suffered from CCD?
- Guest are we looking at the bees eye
Bugscope Team yes it is very hairy too
- Guest why is the eye hairy
- 11:51am
- Bugscope Team the hair may help the bee sense windspeed and direction
- Bugscope Team because often with insects, hairs (or 'setae') are sensory in some way
- Bugscope Team bees are very hairy for even a normal insect. Maybe they help with doing their part in pollenating/gathering pollen grains
- Bugscope Team some setae (pronounced see-tee) are touch sensory, some are hot/cold sensory, and some sense chemicals in the air -- they are used to smell
- Guest what are all those dots on it's eyes?
Bugscope Team the 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 Team the 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 Team bees, wasps, and some other flying insects also have three simple eyes, called ocelli, on the top of the head
- Bugscope Team the ocelli help the insect keep oriented with respect to the sun
- 11:56am
- Guest what are you trying to show us?
Bugscope Team here are some pollen grains. The spikes help them get caught in the bee hair
- Bugscope Team we 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 Team so we took the mag down a little and located the place we had wanted you to be able to see
- Bugscope Team ah this is better!
- Bugscope Team all of the pollen is caught in the combs on the bee's hind leg
- Bugscope Team pollen comes in different shapes, of course, depending on the flower from which it originates
- Bugscope Team the large diagonal spines we see are what the bee uses to comb the pollen into the basket on the other sides of its legs
- 12:01pm
- Guest What do bees do with the pollen?
Bugscope Team They pollenate plants and make food out of it for young bees
- Bugscope Team they mix the pollen with nectar and make 'bee bread'
- Bugscope Team this is one of the claws
- Guest How does a queen bee get her eggs
Bugscope Team first 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 Team unfertilized 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 Team the drones are a little smaller than the queen, and the workers are smaller still
- Bugscope Team the worker bees are all female
- 12:07pm
- Bugscope Team between 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 Team many insects have claws, and they use them in a manner similar to way we use our hands; they help them grasp things
- Guest How do they make royal jelly
Bugscope Team Royal 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
- Guest can the claws hurt you
Bugscope Team no 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
- Guest why do they kick the drones out
Bugscope Team in the wintertime, especially, the drones are not as important to the survival of the hive, and they get kicked out, as you said
- 12:12pm
- Guest can we see the stinger
- Guest why do worker bees die when they sting
Bugscope Team they 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 Team bees are said to die only when they sting mammals, which have thick skin; they can sting other bees and not lose their stingers
- Bugscope Team you can see that this section of the stinger is not so barbed that it should be hard to pull back out
- Bugscope Team you can also see a pollen grain back there to the left
- 12:18pm
- Guest does the hive die if the queen dies
Bugscope Team not necessarily. There could be a few eggs left that are young enough to give royal jelly to.
- Guest whats a stinger made out of ?
Bugscope Team it 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 Team when 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.
- Guest Can a male ever be a queen (king)?
Bugscope Team no there is no leading male bee. Sorry guys!
- Bugscope Team if the emergent queen is confronted by a queen bee, they will fight until there is only one left
- 12:24pm
- Guest how do the bees know how to do there jobs
Bugscope Team it 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
- Guest If the drones get kicked out then how do they make more drones for the spring
Bugscope Team drones 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 Team kind of cool really
- Bugscope Team drone laying queens may be the death of a colony
- Bugscope Team for 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 Team queens are said to take 16 days, drones 24 days, and workers 21 days
- 12:30pm
- Bugscope Team they 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.
- Guest How do insects breath?
Bugscope Team we are in the right place, right now, to see how they breathe
Bugscope Team there 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 Team it 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 Team there are holes in the openings to keep particles from getting in
Bugscope Team sorry hairs not holes
- Bugscope Team some spiracles have what look like little filters at their entrances
- Bugscope Team insects can open and close them, as well
- Guest where are the sphericals
Bugscope Team they are found on each segment, one on each side, usually
- Bugscope Team this is one of them, and as Cate said it has hairs or setae around it that help keep other things from getting in
- Guest what is the magnification here
Bugscope Team 1547!
- Bugscope Team this is a little higher than a normal light microscope can image
- Guest what do bees eat
Bugscope Team the 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
- 12:35pm
- Bugscope Team bees have good eyes, except they are said not to be able to see the color red, and they find flowers by sight
- Bugscope Team now we are looking at the hamuli, which are the hooks that connect the fore- and hindwings together on each side
- Guest whats the rarest bee species
Bugscope Team there'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 Team bees and wasps have four wings, but when they fly they clip their wings together so it is like they really have two wings
- Bugscope Team some of the rarest bees are attracted only to certain flowers, and if those flowers are no longer around the bees will not survive
- Guest whats the life span of a bee?
Bugscope Team the 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
- Guest where are these hooks located
Bugscope Team I think it is the leading edge of the hindwing.
- 12:41pm
- Guest Why do they need to hook their wings together?
Bugscope Team likely 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.
- Guest why do bees make a buzz sound
Bugscope Team the 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 Team also bumblebees vibrate their bodies when they are on flowers to shake the pollen off and you can hear the vibrations from that
- Guest why do bees flap there wings so fast?
Bugscope Team it 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
- Guest whats the name of the rarest bee
Bugscope Team the ones Cate described are called Osmia avosetta
- Guest Do bees sleep?
Bugscope Team they don't sleep like we do, but they do enter a period of inactivity when they need to rest
- 12:46pm
- Guest why does the queen have to have royal jelly and not just nectar
Bugscope Team the royal jelly has chemicals, or hormones, in it that steer the course of the genes into developing a queen rather than a worker
- Guest it is time for us to go back to our classroom
- Guest thanks so much we had a great time and you gave great answers!
- Guest We learned a lot. Thanks.
- Bugscope Team thanks for using bugscope today! Hope you had fun looking at our bee today
- Bugscope Team Thank You!
- Bugscope Team That was fun!
- Bugscope Team https://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2010-073
- Guest thank you for answering our questions today
- Bugscope Team Bye!
- Teacher Thanks so much for accommodating all our classes this year. CCD is not an issue for backyard beekeepers
- Bugscope Team That is good news. Thank You, Ms Shapiro!
- Bugscope Team that's good to hear
- Bugscope Team we are shutting down unless you want to drive around a bit
- Teacher go ahead and shut down
- Bugscope Team see you next year!
- Bugscope Team Thanks!
