Connected on 2011-11-10 09:30:00 from Norfolk, Massachusetts, United States
- 8:27am
- Bugscope Team sample is coating...
- 8:44am
- Bugscope Team Good morning, Mrs. Happnie!
- Bugscope Team welcome to Bugscope!
- Bugscope Team we will start making presets for you in a few minutes, and we should be ready for your class at 9:30.
- Bugscope Team you can see the sample now in the CCD view of the chamber
- Bugscope Team the chamber is pumping down right now, and when it reaches vacuum we will be able to turn on the electron beam
- Teacher Hi Scott- It's Maddy Shapiro Lori and her class will be here ar 10:30- Ijust setting up the lab
- Bugscope Team Oh Cool -- Hi Maddy!
- 8:49am
- Teacher 10:30 EST I mean
- Bugscope Team This is Scott, logged in as Amy, who will be in soon
- Bugscope Team haha we are not who we appear to me
- Bugscope Team be
- Teacher my bees did well this season over 100 lbs of honey!
- Bugscope Team sweet
- 8:55am
- 9:01am
- 9:08am
- 9:13am
- Teacher Can I practice with the controls before the kids come in?
Bugscope Team yes just a couple more presets and you can have control
- Teacher I see that the part of the insect is identified in the upper left this year and a more info button
Bugscope Team yes trying to be a bit more helpful
- 9:20am
- Bugscope Team Alright you may drive now if you wish. Please let us know if you have any questions or problems.
- Teacher Okay I remember how
- 9:25am
- Bugscope Team it's a little different
- Bugscope Team this is the only small bee we had
- Bugscope Team there's a huge one in the lab; we wouldn't have had space for much else
- Teacher Do we have the stinger as a preset
- Bugscope Team yes we do
- Bugscope Team it's called 'Sting'
- Teacher I see now- thanks- Everythhing looks great the kids should be here soon
- Bugscope Team it has some juju on it -- some fluid
- Bugscope Team sorry it is hard to make out the details, like the barbs. it's at an odd angle
- 9:33am
- Bugscope Team Hello from the Bugscope team!
- Bugscope Team Please let us know when you have questions about what you're seeing or how this works.
- Bugscope Team this is the bee's left antenna, a few segments of it
- Bugscope Team beneath the antenna, to the right, is the bee's left compound eye
- Student why is the antena in segment
Bugscope Team The segments make the antenna flexible so it can move around
- Bugscope Team if you look up close at the antenna you will see lots of tiny hairs called 'setae,' and you will also see oval flat areas that are called placoid sensillae. They are chemosensors.
- Student cold a bee have 3 antenna's
Bugscope Team it is possible, but very unusual
- Student what happenens when a bee looses its antenni?
Bugscope Team it would not be happy but could likely use the other one
- 9:38am
- Student What is the antena used for
Bugscope Team the antennae help it smell the fragrance of flowers and pheromones in the air
- Student can one antenna be stronger then another.
Bugscope Team likely, but it would be hard to tell. it would be a cool experiment to devise
- Student Why are there dots on the antenna?
Bugscope Team some of the dots we see -- the white ones -- are actually tiny hairs called setae. some of the round, more gray-appearing dots are the placoid sensillae, which help the bee smell the air
- Bugscope Team I am sitting at the microscope itself, at the scanning electron microscope, or SEM. So I can control it as well. I just brought the magnification up on one segment of the antenna
- Bugscope Team now we can see the tiny bristle-like setae, and we can also see the sensillae.
- Bugscope Team some sensilla are motion-sensitive; the bee can tell when its antenna is flexing a particular way
- Bugscope Team now we can see the compound eye
- 9:43am
- Bugscope Team all of the tiny facets of the compound eye that we see now are called ommatidia
- Bugscope Team some wasps, which are related to bees, can have as many as 17,000 ommatidia in one eye
- Student what is a compound eye?
Bugscope Team a compound eye is an eye that has lots of tiny lenses -- the ommatidia -- like this one
- Student are those skales on the eys
Bugscope Team Those hexagonal bumps that you see, those are the ommatidia.
- Student can the see color/
Bugscope Team yes they can, some better than others
- Student what is the eye made out of
Bugscope Team the eye is made of a protein called chitin
- Student How many eyes does a compound eye have?
Bugscope Team This one could have around 2,000 ommatidia (smaller lenses) on the eye
- Student how big is the eye
Bugscope Team if your teacher takes the magnification down, you can use the scale bar to approximate the size of the eye
- 9:49am
- Student can a bees eyes be different colors?
Bugscope Team Yes, they can. But most times they appear to be black.
- Bugscope Team insects are invertebrates, which means that they do not have a backbone. really, they do not have bones at all; they have what is called an exoskeleton instead. the exoskeleton is a hard shell made of chitin, which is kind of like what your fingernails are made of.
- Bugscope Team sometimes their eyes are covered with long hairs
- Student What shape are the ommatilda in the compound eye?
Bugscope Team As we zoom in on them, you can see that they have 6 sides
Bugscope Team So they are hexagonal
- Student does the bee have good vision
Bugscope Team they have pretty good vision, and the compound eyes allow them to see more at one time than we do
- Bugscope Team many flying insects, including bees, also have three simple eyes, called ocelli, on the top of their heads
- Bugscope Team it is a a little difficult to see the barbs on the sting, or stinger, on this bee
- Bugscope Team you can see that there is some dried fluid, maybe bee venom, on the surface
- 9:55am
- Student How does the queeen bees stinger work
Bugscope Team all stingers are modified ovipositors, and that of the queen bee is certainly more as an ovipositor than as an actual stinger. ovipositors deliver eggs (which are sometimes also called 'ova').
- Student dose the stinger put venom
Bugscope Team the stinger of a worker bee has venom in it
- Student how many bees does it take to fill a jar of honey?
Bugscope Team If you think about how much honey a bee can carry (about .02 grams) and figure out how many grams of honey would be in a jar, it would take about 23,000 bees to fill up a whole jar!
- Student how old ca a drone live?
Bugscope Team they are said to live about 40 to 50 days
- Student can a bee sting a bee?
Bugscope Team Yes, and they won't lose their stinger like they do when they sting mammals
- Student what is the stinger made of ?
Bugscope Team the stinger is also made of chitin, but it is a little bit harder. we have found that some insect features that are hardened like that also have minerals such as zinc in them that help harden them or make them tougher
- Student how many eggs can a queen bee make in a day
Bugscope Team one reference says that a healthy queen bee can lay up to 2000 eggs per day
- 10:00am
- Student how does a bee die when it stings something?
Bugscope Team the bee dies when it stings a mammal, like us, with thick skin; it does not die when it stings another insect, usually
- Student where is the venom stored?
Bugscope Team The worker bee has a bulb by the stinger that holds the venom in it.
- Student can a person die from the venom
Bugscope Team yes if the person is very allergic and does not get treatment
- Student what does a dead bee's stinger feel like to the touch?
Bugscope Team it would feel like a tiny needle
- Student can a dead bees stinger sting?
Bugscope Team No, it won't sting because the bulb holding the venom will not work anymore. However, if you step on it, or something like that, it will still be sharp and may hurt.
- Student is the stinger hollow
Bugscope Team it has two halves and is hollow inside, or has a hollow space inside
- Student why would a bee sting something if it will die afterwards
Bugscope Team what happens is it gets its stinger stuck in your skin and cannot get it out. it tears away from the bee's body, and the bee then has a large hole in it, so it bleeds to death, in a way
- Student how many parts of a legs are there?
Bugscope Team It has 7 or 8 parts -- I will have to look that up
- Student what happens if the queen dies?
Bugscope Team The worker bees put royal jelly on the most recent larva to allow it grow larger than a normal worker cell so they can have a new queen bee
- 10:06am
- Student does a bee have only one stinger
Bugscope Team yes it does!
- Student how did a bee gets its stinger
Bugscope Team it forms when the bee grows into an adult
- Student can we se the pollen basket
Bugscope Team this is it, right here, but there is no pollen on this one
- Student why is the queens stinger different
Bugscope Team Bees develop from cells. A queen bee's cell is grown vertically so that it grow larger than the rest of the worker bees. So since it is grown differently, it will have different attributes compared to the worker bees
- Student can all types of bees pallenate?
Bugscope Team I believe that they can -- even by accident. Lots of insects can pollenate
- Student how much can a pollen basket weigh
Bugscope Team not sure, certainly more than a few milligrams
- Student how much hair does a bee have on its whole body?
Bugscope Team A lot! but it can depend on what type of bee it is, or the size of the bee
- Student how small is the smallest bee?
Bugscope Team the smallest bee species is stingless, and it is said to be about 2 mm long
- Student how much pollen can be held
Bugscope Team the bee can pack the pollen baskets on both of its legs, and it also carries loose pollen that sticks to it. so it depends on the size of the bee
- 10:11am
- Student how much pollen can a bee produce
Bugscope Team Bees collect pollen to take back to their hive. They can hold about .04 grams of pollen depending on their size
- Student are workers and dromes stingers the same
Bugscope Team drones are male bees and cannot sting; I don't believe they even have stingers, since stingers are modified ovipositors and thus a female appendage
- Student how many bees are in a colony
- Student can bees sleep?
Bugscope Team they don't really sleep but go into a state called 'somnolence' in which they are calm and motionless
- Student How many species of bee are in the U.S?
- Student dose the knee joint have any muscles
- Student what is royal jelly?
Bugscope Team The worker bees make it glands in the hypopharynx to use to raise and provide nutrition for the developing queen larvae
- Student can stingers be different colors
Bugscope Team It could be possible. There are over 20,000 different types of bees
- Student why are bees attracted to bright colors
- Student how manybees are there
Bugscope Team there are perhaps 20,000 bee species, and there are said to be 7 to 9 recognized families of bees, but not all have been discovered or named
- Student Is this bee a worker bee?
Bugscope Team yes it is
- Student can a bee get sick
Bugscope Team they can get sick, sometimes from pollutants and sometimes from viruses
- Student how big is the biggest bee?
Bugscope Team The largest bee in the world is Megachile pluto. This is a leafcutter bee and the females can grow to about 39 mm long. They can easily be mistaken for wasps or flies because they are so large.
- Student Are some bees endangered?
Bugscope Team certainly throughout the world there are bee species that are endangered as their habitats are lost
- Student is a bee at all like a person
Bugscope Team not really. they are much more like automatons -- they have a kind of programmed behavior
- Student How can you tell how old a bee is?
- 10:16am
- Student how many body parts do they have
Bugscope Team an insect has a head, a thorax, an abdomen, and six legs. of course there are antennae, the stinger, and lots of other features, so it depends on how we specify body parts
- Bugscope Team the bee leg has a femur, perhaps a condyle closer to the body, a tibia, and probably five tarsomeres -- the tarsal segments that include the claws
- Student how do bees communicate?
Bugscope Team one way they communicate is by 'dancing' for the other bees in a way that tells the other bees where honey is an how far away it is; they can also communicate using pheromones, and that is why their antennae are important, in picking up those chemical signals
- Student how much pollen can a pollen basket hold?
Bugscope Team It would depend on the size of the bee. Some are equipped to carry as much as 40 milligrams back to the hive at a time
- Student is there a killer bee
Bugscope Team the African honeybees are termed killer bees
- Student how much can bees collect?
Bugscope Team In one trip, a bee can carry about .04 grams of pollen. Of course it also depends on the size of the bee.
- Student How old is this bee?
Bugscope Team It is probably a month to 6 weeks old
- Student can baby bees sting?
Bugscope Team I don't think so but I am not sure
- Student how big can a hive get
- Student how long can a bee dos a bee lives
- Student what is the strongest typ of bee
Bugscope Team that is hard to say. do you think the largest ones are the strongest?
- Student do bees play with each other
Bugscope Team not really, not like we do\
- 10:21am
- Student how many bees are in a colony?
Bugscope Team 1 queen bee, 200-300 drones, and 20,000 to 50,000 bees. However, in the winter, there are no drones and therefore the amount of worker bees is more like 15,000
- Student do you know how long it takes for a bee to fully mature?
Bugscope Team you could say 21 to 24 days, for workers and drones, respectively
- Student can a Queenbee pollinate
Bugscope Team The Queen Bee's responsibility is to lay eggs, therefore she never pollinates.
- Student thank you we learned a lot
- Student how much pollen dose one hive use in a day
- Student thank you we learned a lot
- Student THAN YOU SO MUCH AMY AND SEM!
- Student How far away is the claw from the pllen basket?
Bugscope Team the pollen basket is on the femur, so you have the tibia and then about 5 tarsi; the claw is on the last of the tarsi
- Student This was so helpful!!! Thank you so much for giving us a better understanding of bees
- Student how much pollen does a bee collect in a day
- Student what is the weakest type of bee
Bugscope Team I am sorry -- I don't know. Maybe the smallest ones?
- Student thank you we learned a lot
- Bugscope Team Thank You!
- Student THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME!!!
- Student Ho old is the average queen bee?
Bugscope Team I think they live 3 or 4 years, so maybe 2 years would be a good average
- 10:27am
- Bugscope Team Thank You for connecting with us today!
- Bugscope Team http://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2011-074
- Bugscope Team below is the member page for today's session
- Bugscope Team Angie and D are you still here?
- Bugscope Team we are going to close down soon and check out some bacteria samples
- Bugscope Team we are shutting down!
- Bugscope Team Thank You!
