Bee Bio
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Order: Hymenoptera
Family: Apidae
Genus: Apis
Species: mellifera
There are more 25,000 different kinds of bees known on the planet. They are believed to be approximately 130 million years old. Apis melifera, meaning honey carrier, contains 24 different races. These different races are able to mate with each other, which in turn creates many different races of bees.
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Order: Hymenoptera
Family: Apidae
Genus: Apis
Species: mellifera
There are more 25,000 different kinds of bees known on the planet. They are believed to be approximately 130 million years old. Apis melifera, meaning honey carrier, contains 24 different races. These different races are able to mate with each other, which in turn creates many different races of bees.
There are three different types and two sexes of honey bees. They are: females (workers and queens) and males (or drones). Female bees only gather food for their own offspring. Worker bees spread pollen from the different plants; they are solely responsible to feed their offspring, take care and feed the other bees and make honey. Pollen is a powder-like substance that is found on flowers and plants that attracts bees. Bees live in colonies, which on average contains 60,000 bees. The male bees, or drones, make up only approximately 5% of the colony. Drones are not able to sting you and have rounder bodies than the female bees. There is only one queen bee in each colony. The sole responsibility of the queen bee is to lay eggs and will only leave the colony if she is mating. The queen bees are able to lay up to 2,000 eggs daily. When a colony becomes overpopulated with bees, some may leave and form a separate colony, this process is known as swarming.
Bees have four main life stages: egg, larva, pupa and adult. This process is known as metamorphosis. Metamorphosis is a transformation that happens to create an adult insect or amphibian in two or more stages. Metamorphosis occurs for 21 days for bees. After the queen bee lays an egg, it takes 4 days for the egg to hatch into larva. After the ninth day, the larva becomes pupa. The process of transformation of larva to pupa is a solely physical. The pupa doesn't eat while transforming into an adult bee until the 21st day. On the 21st day a full worker bee adult is completely formed.
The hypopharyngeal gland, located on the bees head, produces royal jelly which is fed from the worker bees to all of the other bees in it's colony. In addition to this gland, bees have 5 eyes on their heads: two hexagonal shaped eyes and three simple eyes. Bees vision is similar to that of humans, however bees are unable to see the color red, which prohibits them from pollinating any red colored flowers or plants. These plants rely on other birds or insects for pollination. The thorax, located on the bees back legs contain pollen baskets, which they store pollen in. Their stomachs, honey stomachs, can hold up to 75 mg of honey. This is how they transport the nectar from the plants back to their colonies.