The honey bee is one of the most common and familiar pollinators in the world. For millions of years, it has served as a vital link between plants and their flowers by unwittingly passing on pollen, a plant's male sperm cells.
In addition to their role as a pollinator, honey bees also serve as an essential part of the agricultural industry in many parts of the world. Without them, much of our food production would not be possible.
Despite their popularity as a pollinator, the honey bee is facing increasing threats to its survival. These include a number of parasites and diseases, such as the nonnative Varroa destructor and the invasive American foulbrood virus.
These challenges have put the future of beekeeping in jeopardy, but they also offer an opportunity for citizens to help the honey bee. Specifically, people can increase habitat for bees and reduce insecticide use.
Honey bees, which are a genus of the bee family Apis, have evolved from a species found on mainland Afro-Eurasia into a domesticated bee that lives in and builds hives to store and harvest their own honey. This process of domestication is called apiculture.
Colonies of honey bees are made up of a queen, sterile female workers and male drones. The queen lays eggs, which develop into larvae that feed on pollen and honey until they are big enough to mature. After about three weeks, the larvae pupate and become adult honey bees.
Bees are capable of forming hexagonal wax honeycombs, a form of cell that enables them to store their own pollen and honey for the winter. They build these combs using liquid wax produced by glands in their abdomens.
They produce a layer of wax on the bottom side of their abdomens and knead it into a honeycomb shape, or hexagonal cell. The hexagonal combs provide a protective cover for the queen’s eggs and honey that is essential in protecting the bees from predators.
The honey bee is a social insect that lives in and builds hives to collect and store its own honey. Its hive is comprised of a hollow body that contains the bees’ reproductive organs and a few other structures. The hive has an entrance and a series of boxes, or supers, that are stacked to house the bees’ combs. The outermost box, called the excluder, serves to protect the hive from the elements.
A honey bee’s brain is only about 1 cubic millimeter in size, but it is the most complex animal brain ever studied. It has optic lobes that process visual input from the bee’s large compound eyes, and numerous ganglia that coordinate local neural processing.
Its brain is located in the head and is connected to a ventral nerve cord that runs the length of its body. The ventral nerve cord helps the bee’s brain process all its bodily functions, including its ability to learn and remember.
The bee’s body is made up of four sections: the head, abdomen, thorax and a small tail. The abdomen contains the heart, venom sac, a digestive system and several glands. The thorax is the largest of the four sections and is home to the wings and the torso, which support the bee’s weight while it is flying.
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