Classification of the bees in the animal kingdom
Bees belong to the animal kingdom:
Division: Arthropods
Category: Insects
Under Category: winged insects
Category: Insect wings internal
Rank: Hymenoptera
Under rank: bumblebees
Subfamily: bees Stingrays
Subfamily: honey bees
Includes nine species, including honey bees, which is spread in most parts of the world
bee
Bees are aerial insects carefully accompanying to wasps and ants, and are accepted for their role in pollination and for bearing honey and beeswax. Bees are a monophyletic birth aural the superfamily Apoidea, anon classified by the unranked taxon name Anthophila. There are about 20,000 accepted breed of bees in seven to nine accustomed families,[1] admitting abounding are undescribed and the absolute cardinal is apparently higher. They are begin on every abstemious except Antarctica, in every abode on the planet that contains insect-pollinated beginning plants.
Bees are acclimatized for agriculture on ambrosia and pollen, the above primarily as an activity antecedent and the closing primarily for protein and added nutrients. Best pollen is acclimated as aliment for larvae.
Bees accept a continued bill (a circuitous "tongue") that enables them to access the ambrosia from flowers. They accept antennae about universally fabricated up of 13 segments in males and 12 in females, as is archetypal for the superfamily. Bees all accept two pairs of wings, the afterwards brace actuality the abate of the two; in a actual few species, one sex or degree has almost abbreviate wings that accomplish flight difficult or impossible, but none are wingless.
The aboriginal bee is Trigona minima, a stingless bee whose workers are about 2.1 mm (5/64") long. The better bee in the apple is Megachile pluto, a leafcutter bee whose females can attain a breadth of 39 mm (1.5"). Members of the ancestors Halictidae, or diaphoresis bees, are the best accepted blazon of bee in the Northern Hemisphere, admitting they are baby and generally mistaken for wasps or flies. The best-known bee breed is the European honey bee, which, as its name suggests, produces honey, as do a few added types of bee. Human administration of this breed is accepted as beekeeping or apiculture.
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Evolution
Bees, like ants, are a specialized form of wasp. The ancestors of bees were wasps in the family Crabronidae, and therefore predators of other insects. The switch from insect prey to pollen may have resulted from the consumption of prey insects which were flower visitors and were partially covered with pollen when they were fed to the wasp larvae. This same evolutionary scenario has also occurred within the vespoid wasps, where the group known as "pollen wasps" also evolved from predatory ancestors. Up until recently, the oldest non-compression bee fossil had been Cretotrigona prisca in New Jersey amber and of Cretaceous age, a meliponine. A recently reported bee fossil, of the genus Melittosphex, is considered "an extinct lineage of pollen-collecting Apoidea sister to the modern bees", and dates from the early Cretaceous (~100 mya).[14] Derived features of its morphology ("apomorphies") place it clearly within the bees, but it retains two unmodified ancestral traits ("plesiomorphies") of the legs (two mid-tibial spurs, and a slender hind basitarsus), indicative of its transitional status.
The earliest animal-pollinated flowers were pollinated by insects such as beetles, so the syndrome of insect pollination was well established before bees first appeared. The novelty is that bees are specialized as pollination agents, with behavioral and physical modifications that specifically enhance pollination, and are generally more efficient at the task than any other pollinating insect such as beetles, flies, butterflies and pollen wasps. The appearance of such floral specialists is believed to have driven the adaptive radiation of the angiosperms, and, in turn, the bees themselves.
Among living bee groups, the "short-tongued" bee family Colletidae has traditionally been considered the most "primitive", and sister taxon to the remainder of the bees. In the 21st century, however, some researchers have claimed that the Dasypodaidae is the basal group, the short, wasp-like mouthparts of colletids being the result of convergent evolution, rather than indicative of a plesiomorphic condition.[1] This subject is still under debate, and the phylogenetic relationships among bee families are poorly understood.
Honey bees
Honey bees (or honeybees) are a subset of bees in the genus Apis, primarily distinguished by the production and storage of honey and the construction of perennial, colonial nests out of wax. Honey bees are the only extant members of the tribe Apini, all in the genus Apis. Currently, there are only seven recognised species of honey bee with a total of 44 subspecies,[1] though historically, anywhere from six to eleven species have been recognised. Honey bees represent only a small fraction of the approximately 20,000 known species of bees. Some other types of related bees produce and store honey, but only members of the genus Apis are true honey bees.
Scientific classification of the honey bee
Order
Hymenoptera
Suborder
apocrita symphyta
infraorder
borers aculeate
superfamily
pompiloidea Apoidea vespoidea sphecoidea Formicidae
family
Megachilidae Apidae primitive Apidae higher mellittidae
subfamily
Apinae
trib
bombini meliponini euglossini apini
gender
apis
species
Apis mellifera linnaeuss
race
Apis mellifera ligustica Apis mellifera iberica apis mellifera mellifera
Life cycle
As in a few other types of eusocial bees, a colony generally contains one queen bee, a fertile female; seasonally up to a few thousand drone bees or fertile males;[9] and a large seasonally variable population of sterile female worker bees. Details vary among the different species of honey bees, but common features include:
Eggs are laid singly in a cell in a wax honeycomb, produced and shaped by the worker bees. Using her spermatheca, the queen actually can choose to fertilize the egg she is laying, usually depending on what cell she is laying in. Drones develop from unfertilised eggs and are haploid, while females (Queens and worker bees) develop from fertilised eggs and are diploid. Larvae are initially fed with royal jelly produced by worker bees, later switching to honey and pollen. The exception is a larva fed solely on royal jelly, which will develop into a queen bee. The larva undergoes several moltings before spinning a cocoon within the cell, and pupating.
Young worker bees clean the hive and feed the larvae. When their royal jelly producing glands begin to atrophy, they begin building comb cells. They progress to other within-colony tasks as they become older, such as receiving nectar and pollen from foragers, and guarding the hive. Later still, a worker takes her first orientation flights and finally leaves the hive and typically spends the remainder of her life as a forager.
Worker bees cooperate to find food and use a pattern of "dancing" (known as the bee dance or waggle dance) to communicate information regarding resources with each other; this dance varies from species to species, but all living species of Apis exhibit some form of the behavior. If the resources are very close to the hive, they may also exhibit a less specific dance commonly known as the "Round Dance".
Honey bees also perform tremble dances which recruit receiver bees to collect nectar from returning foragers.
Virgin queens go on mating flights away from their home colony, and mate with multiple drones before returning. The drones die in the act of mating.
Colonies are established not by solitary queens, as in most bees, but by groups known as "swarms", which consist of a mated queen and a large contingent of worker bees. This group moves en masse to a nest site that has been scouted by worker bees beforehand. Once they arrive, they immediately construct a new wax comb and begin to raise new worker brood. This type of nest founding is not seen in any other living bee genus, though there are several groups of Vespid wasps which also found new nests via swarming (sometimes including multiple queens). Also, stingless bees will start new nests with large numbers of worker bees, but the nest is constructed before a queen is escorted to the site, and this worker force is not a true "swarm".
Beekeeping
wo species of honey bee, A. mellifera and A. cerana, are often maintained, fed, and transported by beekeepers. Modern hives also enable beekeepers to transport bees, moving from field to field as the crop needs pollinating and allowing the beekeeper to charge for the pollination services they provide, revising the historical role of the self-employed beekeeper, and favoring large-scale commercial operations.
Pollination
Species of Apis are generalist floral visitors, and will pollinate a large variety of plants, but by no means all plants. Of all the honey bee species, only Apis mellifera has been used extensively for commercial pollination of crops and other plants. The value of these pollination services is commonly measured in the billions of dollars.
Bee products
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Honey is the circuitous actuality fabricated back the ambrosia and candied deposits from plants and copse are gathered, adapted and stored in the bore by honey bees as a aliment antecedent for the colony. All active breed of Apis accept had their honey aggregate by aboriginal peoples for consumption, admitting for bartering purposes alone Apis mellifera and Apis cerana accept been exploited to any degree. Honey is sometimes additionally aggregate by bodies from the nests of assorted stingless bees.
Beeswax
Beeswax is a very helpful product. Beeswax is a secretion from four glands on the underside of a worker bees’ abdomen. Some major uses of beeswax are cosmetics and candle making. Some minor uses are lotions, cold creams, ointments, salves, lipsticks, rouges, pill coatings, waterproofing, coatings for electrical apparatus, floor and furniture polishes, leather polishes, arts and crafts items, adhesives, crayons, inks, basketball molding, grafting wax, ski wax and ironing wax.
Most of the world’s beeswax comes from Africa. Roman wax tablets were found in Egypt. Persians and Syrians both covered important bodies with wax before burial. Beeswax death masks were made by Mme Tussaud for King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette after their execution
Pollen
Bees aggregate pollen in the pollen bassinet and backpack it aback to the hive. In the hive, pollen is acclimated as a protein antecedent all-important during brood-rearing. In assertive environments, balance pollen can be calm from the hives of A. mellifera and A. cerana. It is generally eaten as a bloom supplement.
Propolis
For honey bees, propolis is used for a kind of glue. Honey bees gather propolis from trees and other vegetation. They use it to seal cracks and crevices in the hive to make it less drafty when it is cold. Propolis is sticky when it is warm and it is difficult to deal with when it is hard. Propolis was used for medical purposes by doctors in Via Sacra. Roman doctors favored it more than wax. Propolis is also an effective dressing for wounds and was used during the Boer War (Oct. 11, 1899-May 31, 1902).
Propolis is also used for a variety of things. It was used in veterinary practice in Russia. It is used as ointments for healing animal cuts and wounds. Doctors have experimented with an alcohol tincture for hearing defects. If propolis is mixed with mineral spirits, it can be used as a natural varnish. Famous violinists used propolis in their violin varnish.
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