Connected on 2012-05-04 09:30:00 from Norfolk, Massachusetts, United States
- 7:24am
- Bugscope Team sample is pumping down
- Bugscope Team 1.7 x 10-3
- Bugscope Team 1.6
- 7:29am
- Bugscope Team 1.5
- 7:35am
- Bugscope Team now we're making presets for today's session
- 7:41am
- Bugscope Team good morning!
- Bugscope Team welcome to Bugscope!
- Teacher Hi- it's Maddy Shapiro for Kelly Susi's class
- Teacher Just setting up student stations
- Bugscope Team Maddy this is Scott. Good to see you!
- Teacher I tried to log in a computer as student but it wasn't an option - only guest or guest entomologist
- Teacher Never mind:-)
- Bugscope Team sometimes that happens, not sure why
- 7:47am
- Bugscope Team and you fixed it!
- Teacher I think you needed to get logged in as a teacher first
- Bugscope Team makes sense, so the software knows what IP address to associate with students
- 7:52am
- 7:57am
- 8:02am
- 8:09am
- 8:15am
- Bugscope Team hello!
- Bugscope Team this is a palp attached to the glossa -- the tongue of the bee
- Teacher Hi Class in not here yet Looking at the presets- they look great!
Bugscope Team Cool!
- Bugscope Team apparently this honeybee did not have a chance to get out into the world
- Bugscope Team and collect pollen
- Bugscope Team these are chemosensors on the antenna, up close (honeybee)
- Teacher very cool
- Teacher It was a nurse bee?
Bugscope Team not sure
- Bugscope Team I am not good enough to tell.
- Bugscope Team not enough experience with bees to know
- 8:21am
- Teacher very swarmy spring here in ma
Bugscope Team good deal! It seems like it came a little late this year.
- Teacher bad deal for beekeepers who lose their bees!
- Bugscope Team I was in Cincinnati at Annie's (she used to be our entomologist) several weeks ago, but it was too cold and overcast to catch bees
- Bugscope Team interesting the latest news about CCD, with the idea that the problem is nicotinamide pesticide residue in high-fructose corn syrup that many beekeepers use in the winter
- Teacher It has been such a warm winter and spring here that most pepople's hives survived the winter and built up fast
Bugscope Team haha of course I usually do not go outdoors in the daytime
- Teacher maybe that's why backyard beekeepers don't see ccd
Bugscope Team makes sense, so far, with the timing of the harvest of the nicotinamide-treated corn harvest in 2005, I think they said
- Bugscope Team the first of those harvests, that is
- 8:27am
- Bugscope Team we get to work with Alex Wild, sometimes. he's one of the best insect photographers in the world, although he'd be embarrassed to see me say that. he teaches beekeeping here but I have not had a chance to speak with him since that theory came out
- Teacher Class is here!
- Student hi
- Student hi
- Bugscope Team hello everyone!
- Bugscope Team welcome to Bugscope!
- Student hello!
- Student Hello
- Student HI
- Bugscope Team hello!
- Bugscope Team please let us know when you have questions about anything at all...
- Bugscope Team this is the head of a honeybee, a bit hard to tell
- Bugscope Team its jaw (mandible is in the middle, to the left, and its antennae go horizontally across the top and bottom of the screen
- Student where are the eyes
Bugscope Team there is a compound eye to the lower right of the screen.
Bugscope Team lower right corner is the left eye
- Student Why are there segments on the antenna?
Bugscope Team the antennae are flexible, and those are joints that allow them to bend the way the bee wants them to
- Bugscope Team I am sorry the eye is collapsed
- Bugscope Team this bee was in ethanol -- someone had collected it and preserved it in ethanol -- and you can see what happened to the eye
- 8:32am
- Bugscope Team now we can see the ommatidia -- the individual eye facets. and we also see lots of setae (hair) on the eye
- Student what are those scales
Bugscope Team those are the individual facets, called ommatidia, of the compound eye. They each help with seeing.
- Bugscope Team bees see blues, greens, and ultraviolet
- Student why is there hair coming out of the eye
Bugscope Team the hair helps the bee maintain a more constant body temperature, and it is also sensory -- the bee can sense the wind/windspeed through the hair on its eye
- Student we noticed that
- Student wow :)
- Bugscope Team we can also see that the setae (the hairs) go through the surface of the eye and connect with nerves on the inside of the head
- Bugscope Team you can see now that the ommatidia are neat little hexagons
Bugscope Team hexagons are the best shape to fit something that curves around- gets as many of the ommatidia to fit in that area as possible
- 8:37am
- Student Why isn't there a king bee.
Bugscope Team there are few male bees compared to females, and a king bee is (sadly?) not necessary
- Bugscope Team this is one of the hindlimbs of the honeybee
- Bugscope Team if the bee was actively collecting pollen and nectar, it would paste it onto this space on the hindleg and fly back to the hive with it stuck here
- Bugscope Team kind of like how there isn't a king of england right now :)
Bugscope Team yeah just not needed
- Student pollen
- Bugscope Team one thing they do is carry it from flower to flower, and in that way, some of the pollen from one flower gets spread to another flower, and there is cross-pollination
- Student How do they get the pollen in the basket?
Bugscope Team they spread it onto the basket, and it sticks there
- 8:43am
- Student why do they need pollen in the hive?
- Bugscope Team I had said earlier that the bee collects nectar as well but it does not paste it onto the leg -- it sucks it up into its mouth
- Student what do they do with the poolen
Bugscope Team they eat it. They mix the pollen with nectar and some other stuff where it eventually becomes bee bread. It's packed with protein
- Bugscope Team they use pollen to feed the colony, as Cate said; when they mix it, they are chewing it
- Student how do they make royal jelly
Bugscope Team royal jelly comes from special glands in worker bees, and it is fed to all larvae but in different proportions
- 8:49am
- Student what is this!!!!!!!!!!!!
Bugscope Team these are hamuli. They are hooks that bees and wasps have on their wings. They use these hooks to hook the fore- and hind wings together so they would fly with one big pair of wings instead of 2
- Student How long can they live without eating
Bugscope Team not sure if we know the answer to that, maybe several days or a week
Bugscope Team the larvae need constant care and would suffer probably in only a few days if there was no care and no food
- Student do they ever fly with just there fore wings
Bugscope Team no -- the hindwings would get in the way. having four wings means that they can fold more easily when they enter the nest, and when they get out they can just hook their wings together to make two wings
- Student Do they glide like some birds do??!
Bugscope Team I don't think they are able to glide; they would glide kind of like rocks
- Student how fast can they fly?????
Bugscope Team they top out at 20 mph, but typically can fly 10-15 mph when carrying pollen.
- Bugscope Team wasps and ants are related to bees, and wasps have four wings as well; they also have hamuli
- 8:54am
- Bugscope Team we see lots of tiny parasitoid wasps here in the lab
- Bugscope Team humans can run at 7-10 mph, so don't make bees mad!
Bugscope Team haha
- Student how do they make the hive
Bugscope Team they are quite organized. I believe much of the work is done using their mouthparts
- Bugscope Team when I looked this up, the reference I found said that the bees have special wax glands that they use to lay down the hexagonal shapes of the individual cells of the hive, but I don't know where those glands are
- Student Why does the pollen have indents
Bugscope Team I'm not exactly sure, but it is possible that the indents wouldn't be so deep if the pollen grain wasn't so dry
- 8:59am
- Student are all pollens shaped the same!
Bugscope Team no not at all! Some look like balls with spikes all over for example
- Student What happens if the queen bee dies??
Bugscope Team the bees will choose a new queen from larvae that they have raised specially, just in case. those larvae are fed a higher concentration of royal jelly that activates different genes and makes the larvae respond by forming a pre-queen
- Bugscope Team if there are two queens, in some cases they are said to fight over who will become the one queen
- Bugscope Team usually the other queen will leave and start a new hive
- Bugscope Team they will try to quickly make a queen out of a larva by giving it extra royal jelly
- Student What happens if the queen dies and there waiting for the new one to grow???
Bugscope Team If the new queen does not mature soon enough, the colony may not survive
- Student What happens if a bees entenna breaks
Bugscope Team they will most likely die since that is how they get information. Also they may bleed out some from the wound
- Student what is this thing??!!
Bugscope Team this is the surface of one segment of one of the antennae
- 9:05am
- Bugscope Team many insects, including bees, use their antennae to collect information, and that comes mostly in the form of chemical signals
- Bugscope Team the antennae are covered with different kinds of setae and other organelles whose purpose is to collect chemical information
- Bugscope Team here we see both hairlike setae and flat disclike placoid sensillae that we believe collect chemical signals from the air or from touch
- Student what color is their blood
Bugscope Team insect blood is called hemolymph, and usually it is clear. when you smash an insect and see yellow goo it is because other things got mixed with the hemolymph
- Student how to bees breathe
Bugscope Team they have little portholes along their body called spiracles that are attached to trachea. The trachea runs through the body to supply the oxygen
- Bugscope Team here we see the glossa, which is the tongue, and we also see the hardened sheath that usually protects the glossa
- 9:10am
- Student what organs get ripped out when they sting
Bugscope Team there is a muscle that is attached to the stinger that gets ripped out. It is the muscle that pumps venom into her victims. After it gets ripped out of the body, it continues to pump the venom even.
- Student is this the glossa:)
Bugscope Team yes it is!
- Bugscope Team the glossa, you can see, is much like a fine paintbrush
- Student what is the function of the thorax
Bugscope Team it's where the legs are attached...
- Bugscope Team now we see part of the maxilla. above, and in the center we see a palp that has sensory setae on it like tastebuds
- 9:15am
- Student how do they get the nectar out of the flower?
Bugscope Team they extend the maxillae, with the glossa inside, into the flower, and they can also extend the glossa beyond the maxillae; the brush-like glossa soaks up nectar from the flower
- Student What is that little thing hanging out the glossa
Bugscope Team that is a small labial palp that helps the bee taste its prospective food
- Student Why don't drones go into another hive once kicked out?
Bugscope Team bees and other insects as well can tell who belongs by their scent
- Bugscope Team insects really do collect and use much more chemical scent information than we do, so it is sometimes hard for us to understand. for example, if you were to take the smell of a dead ant and brush it onto a live ant, the ants that clean up the trash in the nest would throw that live ant away even if it was struggling and clearly alive
- 9:20am
- Student what are the exoskletan made of????
Bugscope Team it is made of chitin.
Bugscope Team which is similar to keratin, which is what nails are made of
- Student when they go far away to get nector how do they find their way back
Bugscope Team on the top of their heads they have three more eyes, simple eyes called ocelli; those eyes are not as good at seeing as the compound eyes, but they help the bees orient with the sun and shadows, and they help the bees keep from getting lost
- Bugscope Team here we are looking at two tarsi, which are the final several segments of the limbs
- Bugscope Team the endmost parts of the tarsi are the claws, and we see two sets here although it is a little tricky to tell what is what
- Bugscope Team all insects have a head, a thorax, six legs, two antennae, and an abdomen
- Bugscope Team often all six legs have claws at their ends
- Bugscope Team a spider does not have a head and a thorax (which is where, as Cate said, the legs are attached to the body); a spider has a cephalothorax, which means 'head-thorax'
- Bugscope Team now we see one of the claws up close, and also a seta that when it is bent lets the bee know that it is grasping or at least touching something
- 9:25am
- Student what is this
Bugscope Team this is one of the parts of a claw. There should be another around somewhere. They close the 2 parts together to pinch whatever they want
- Student looks like a basket:-)!!!!!!!!!!!
- Student why does the queen need a stinger
Bugscope Team in the case of the queen, the stinger may function as a stinger but it is used for its other purpose -- as an ovipositor -- for laying eggs. very important!
- Student how come one part of the claw is so much bigger than the other?
Bugscope Team we didn't get to see the other half; what we saw was a single claw with two 'tines' on it
- Student why dosn't the queen bee leave the hive?
Bugscope Team their main job is to lay eggs, but sometimes they do have to leave if they need to leave the hive to move to a new location
- 9:31am
- Student Can bees sting other bees
Bugscope Team yes they can, but it does not kill them to sting other insects. when bees sting mammals, the mammals' thick skin retains the stinger, and that is why the bee dies -- its stinger and the outboard motor attached to it get pulled out
- Bugscope Team right now we are looking at scales from a butterfly's wing
- Bugscope Team scales are kind of like feathers are to birds, but they have lots of purposes
- Bugscope Team butterflies, moths, mosquitoes, silverfish and very few other insects have scales
- Bugscope Team when you rub a butterfly's wing and it feels silky and fine powder comes off, the fine powder is hundreds of scales like the two we see right now
- Bugscope Team when an insect like a moth or butterfly flies into a spiderweb, it can sometimes escaped because the scales will stick to the web and come loose from the wings; in that way the insect can slip away
- Bugscope Team this is a very sad-looking housefly
- 9:37am
- Bugscope Team its compound eyes are to the left and right, and in the top center of where we are looking now are the bases of the antennae, which broke off
- Student is that a bug in its mouth
Bugscope Team it is a mouthpart it uses to sponge up liquids to eat. It first spits on the food to liquify it enough
- Bugscope Team above the sponging mouthpart are two palps
- Bugscope Team sorry this fly is so dirty!
- Teacher Thank you!
- Student Thnx
- Student thank you
- Student thx
- Student THANX YOU
- Student we had fun
- Bugscope Team Thank you!
- Student bye
- Student THANK YOU SO MUCH WE LEARNED SOOOO MUCH
- Student WE LEARNED A LOT
- Student =()
- Teacher Thanks for your time
- Student THANK YOU
- Teacher We need to leave now
- Bugscope Team Bye!
- Student we learned so much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- Bugscope Team thanks for joining us this morning!
- Student bye bye
- Student THANX
- Student bye bye1
- Student Thank you for your time. We had a great time!!!!!!!!!
- Bugscope Team you can see chat and images from today by visiting your member pagr
- Bugscope Team page*
- Student bye!!!!!!! ;)
- Bugscope Team https://bugscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/members/2011-133
