Physics
Biology - a universal reference book. Domesticated insects - honey bees and silkworms. Features of the structure and behavior of worker bees.

Biology - a universal reference book. Domesticated insects - honey bees and silkworms. Features of the structure and behavior of worker bees.

Of all the known insects, humans have domesticated only the honey bee and the silkworm. When breeding bees, it was possible to have honey and wax, and when breeding silkworms, silk was possible.

Bee family

Honeybees live in large families: wild ones in tree hollows, domestic ones in hives. Each family has a female - the queen, several hundred males - drones (they live from the time they emerge from the pupae until autumn) and up to 70 thousand worker bees. The queen bee is the largest bee in the family. Starting in spring, she lays eggs (up to 2000 per day). Drones are medium-sized bees with large eyes touching at the back of the head. They fertilize the uterus. Worker bees do all the work in the hive. They are smaller than the rest of the family.

Honey bees

Families of honey bees can be classified as clearly social colonies. In a family, each bee performs its own function. The functions of a bee are conditionally determined by its biological age. However, as has been established, in the absence of older bees, their functions can be performed by bees of younger ages.
It is necessary to distinguish between the actual and biological age of the bee, since during the honeybee the worker bee lives from 30 to 35 days, and during wintering the bee remains biologically young for up to 9 months (Central Russian gray bee in the conditions of northern Russia and Siberia). When indicating the life span and periods of development of bees, they usually focus on the life expectancy of the bee at the time of the honeybee.

Features of the structure and behavior of worker bees. On the underside of the worker bee's abdomen there are smooth areas called speculum. Wax is released onto their surface. Bees make hexagonal cells from it - honeycombs: large, medium and small. On the hind legs of bees there is one “basket” and one “brush”. With their help, they collect flower pollen. Having arrived at the hive, the bees place it in the cells of the honeycomb. Other worker bees compact the pollen and soak it in honey. Bee bread is formed - a supply of protein feed. The bees regurgitate the nectar collected from flowers into cells from the honey crop. Here it turns into honey - a supply of sugary food. “Milk” is produced in special glands of worker bees. They feed the queen and larvae with it. At the end of the abdomen of worker bees there is a retractable serrated sting associated with a poison gland and used for defense.

Worker bees also perform other work: ventilate the hive, clean it, seal the cracks, etc. Each of them goes through all types of activities during its life as it develops certain glands. Young worker bees (up to 10 days old) make up the queen’s retinue, feeding her and the larvae, since young bees secrete royal jelly well. From approximately 7 days of age, wax glands begin to work on the lower part of the bee's abdomen and wax begins to be secreted in the form of small plates. Such bees gradually switch to construction work in the nest. As a rule, in the spring there is a massive rebuilding of white honeycombs - this is due to the fact that by this period the overwintered bees en masse reach the biological age corresponding to the rebuilding bees.

Around 14-15 days, the productivity of the wax glands drops sharply and the bees switch to the following types of nest care activities - they clean the cells, clean up and remove garbage. From the age of about 20 days, bees switch to ventilating the nest and guarding the entrance. Bees older than 22-25 days are mainly engaged in honey collection. To inform other bees about the location of nectar, the foraging bee uses visual biocommunication. Bees over 30 days old switch from honey collection to collecting water for the needs of the family. This bee life cycle is designed for the most rational utilization of nutrients and the use of the available number of bees in the family. The bee's body contains the largest amount of excess nutrients when it leaves the cell. At the same time, most bees die when they take water from natural reservoirs. Much fewer of them die when collecting honey from flowers and when approaching the hive.

Bee development. The uterus lays fertilized eggs in large and small cells, and unfertilized eggs in medium cells. The worker bees feed the larvae hatched from the eggs with “milk”. Then only the larvae of large cells receive the “milk”, the rest receive pollen and honey. After the last molt of the larvae, the worker bees seal the cells with wax. Soon the larvae pupate, and then adult insects emerge from the pupae. They gnaw through the wax caps and crawl out to the surface of the honeycomb. Queens emerge from large cells, drones emerge from medium cells, and worker bees emerge from small cells.

Silkworm

The silkworm is a medium-sized white butterfly. Before pupation, its caterpillars weave cocoons from silk thread. Silkworm breeding began in China about 5 thousand years ago. In the process of domestication from generation to generation, butterflies were left for breeding, which laid many eggs and had underdeveloped wings, and their caterpillars wove large cocoons (their thread became up to 1000 m long or more).

The silkworm belongs to the insect class, a representative of the arthropod phylum. This silkworm may be an example of a domesticated insect. As a domestic insect, people have been breeding the silkworm for several millennia; it has lost the properties of its wild ancestors and can no longer live in natural conditions. He has developed a number of adaptations that greatly facilitate his breeding. For example, silkworm butterflies have essentially lost the ability to fly. Females are especially inactive. The caterpillars are also inactive and do not crawl away.

The silkworm, like other butterflies, develops with complete transformation. The silkworm butterfly has a wingspan of 40 to 60 mm. The color of its body and wings is dirty white with more or less distinct brownish bands. By appearance, a female silkworm is quite easy to distinguish from a male. She has a more massive abdomen than the male, and her antennae are less developed. On the first day after leaving the cocoon (silk shell), the female insect lays eggs, the so-called grena. A clutch contains on average from 500 to 700 eggs. Egg laying lasts three days.

A caterpillar emerges from an egg. She grows quickly and sheds four times. Caterpillars develop within 26–32 days. The duration of their development depends on the breed, temperature, air humidity, quantity and quality of food, etc. The silkworm caterpillar feeds on mulberry leaves. At the end of development, the caterpillar strongly develops a pair of silk glands. They intensively secrete liquid, which quickly thickens in air, turning into a silk thread. From this thinnest thread, reaching 1000 m in length, the caterpillar spins a cocoon. In the cocoon, the caterpillar turns into a pupa. The cocoon shell protects the pupa from various unfavorable conditions.

Cocoons come in different colors: pink, greenish, yellow, etc. But for industrial needs, currently only breeds with white cocoons are bred. A butterfly is formed from the pupa. It secretes a special liquid that dissolves the sticky substance of the cocoon. With its head and legs, the butterfly pushes the silks apart and exits the cocoon through the resulting hole. Over the past decades, various breeds of silkworms have been developed, differing in the size of the cocoons, their color, length and strength of the thread.

The importance of insects in human life

Insects have both positive and negative significance in human life and economic activity. There are more than one million insects in total, so the real pests that really need to be fought are only 1%. But other insects are either beneficial or indifferent to humans.

There are domesticated insects, for example, the honey bee and the silkworm - they are specially bred. The honeybee produces honey, wax, propolis, apilac, royal jelly, and the silkworm produces silk thread, which can be continuous and reach 1000 meters.

In addition to these insects, the caterpillars of the oak cocoon moth are very valuable - they have a coarser silk thread and it is suitable for making comb fabric, lacquer bugs - they secrete a wax-like substance with insulating properties, which is used in radio - and carmine bugs - they produce red carmine dye , blister beetles - they secrete a caustic substance called cantharidin, which is used to make blister plaster.

Insect pollinators - they represent many orders, among them Hymenoptera occupy an important place - they increase the yield of seeds, berries, fruits, flowers of many cultivated plants - fruits and berries, vegetables, fodder, flowers.

The importance of insects in nature

Insects make up 80% of all animals on Earth. By the way, according to various estimates, there are from 2 to 10 million species of insects in the modern fauna, and of these, only a little more than 1 million are known so far. Actively participating in the cycle of substances, insects play a global planetary role in nature.

For example, more than 80% of plants are pollinated only by insects. It is safe to say that a flower is an exceptional result of the joint evolution of plants and insects. The adaptations of flowering plants to attract insects are varied: pollen, nectar, essential oils, aroma, shape and color of the flower. But the adaptations of insects are the sucking proboscis of butterflies, the gnawing-licking proboscis of bees; or special pollen-collecting apparatus - bees and bumblebees have a brush and a basket on the hind legs, megachila bees have an abdominal brush, numerous hairs on the legs and body.

Insects also play a significant role in soil formation. This participation is associated not only with loosening the soil and enriching it with humus by soil insects and their larvae, but also with the decomposition of plant and animal remains - plants, corpses, animal excrement, while simultaneously fulfilling a sanitary role and the circulation of substances in nature.

The following types of insects perform various sanitary roles:

Coprophagous - among them dung beetles, dung flies and cow flies;

Necrophages - such as carrion beetles, gravediggers, leather beetles, meat-eating flies and carrion flies;

Insects that are destroyers of dead plant debris: be it wood, branches, leaves, needles - these are borer beetles, longhorned beetle larvae, golden beetles, horntails, long-legged mosquitoes, carpenter ants, fungus gnats and so on;

Insects-sanitizers that feed on suspended or settled rotting organic matter (detritus) - these are the larvae of mosquitoes, or bells, mayflies, caddis flies, purify water and serve as a bioindicator of its sanitary condition.

Thus, insects are the most important element of the food pyramids. Many animals feed on insects: fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals.

This is interesting!

Adult sizes of modern insects range from 0.139 mm (0.00547 inches) for fireflies to 55.5 cm (21.9 inches) for stick insects.

Scientists have discovered the longest insect on the island of Borneo - a stick insect, the length of which reaches half a meter. So far, experts have discovered only three individuals and can say practically nothing about the characteristics of this species.

Another notable find was a chameleon frog. At night, the covers of these 3.5 centimeter amphibians are bright green, and during the day their body color turns brown.

Goals and objectives: to generalize and expand knowledge about insects, to reveal the structural features and behavior of the honey bee, the silkworm, to show their practical significance, to teach children to compare, analyze, draw conclusions, and cultivate a love of nature.     Even the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BC) divided the animal world into two main groups: “with blood” (now vertebrates) and “without blood” (invertebrates). From the last group, he singled out “entomons”, from Greek “insects” “insektum” - from Latin means “insect” Insecticides are chemical preparations for controlling insect pests.   this is the extraction of honey from forest bees and their breeding. At the beginning of the 19th century, the Ukrainian landowner Pyotr Ivanovich Prokopovich first used the collapsible beehive he invented.   the presence within one species of individuals that differ in appearance. In bees, this is due to the division of functions of different individuals in the family and colony. There are queen bees, drone bees and worker bees.       Has a pointed long abdomen. Its new role is mating and laying eggs. Appears from fertilized eggs. The larvae are fed with crop milk; the development time is 16 days. Lives up to 5 years. There is one queen in the family.     The drone has large eyes touching at the back of the head and a rounded abdomen. Develops from unfertilized eggs. The larvae feed on crop milk for 3-4 days, then on beebread (pollen soaked in honey); larval development takes 24 days. There are several hundred drones in a family, they live for one season (summer-autumn)   They have “baskets” on their hind legs for collecting pollen and “brushes” - wide segments with hard bristles. With their help, bees collect adhering pollen from their bodies, moisten it with nectar and place it in baskets. On the lower surface of the abdomen there are smooth areas without hairs - mirrors, on the surface of which wax is secreted. Bees make hexagonal cells from it - honeycombs: large, medium and small.  Develop from fertilized eggs, the larvae feed on milk for 3-4 days, then on beebread. Development cycle: egg (3 days), larva (6 days), pupa (12 days). On the 21st day after laying eggs, a young bee emerges. Their responsibilities: cleaning cells, feeding the queen and larvae, building honeycombs, scouting, collecting food, protecting the hive. Bees collect nectar from flowers in the extension of the esophagus (honey crop), and then secrete it into the cells of the honeycomb. Nectar mixed with gland secretions turns into honey.   The uterus lays fertilized eggs in large and small cells, and unfertilized eggs in medium cells. The worker bees feed the larvae hatched from the eggs with “goiter milk”. Then only the larvae in large cells receive the “milk”, while the rest receive pollen and honey. Queens emerge from large cells, drones emerge from medium cells, and worker bees emerge from small cells.   Before leaving the cell, the young queen makes sounds. The old queen tries to kill her, but this is prevented by the worker bees guarding the young queen. Soon after this, the old queen leaves the nest with some of the worker bees. The emerging swarm of bees lands somewhere on a branch or at the base of a tree, and then, having found a hollow, the bees settle in it.     The young queen emerging from the eggs seeks out the sealed cells in which other queens are developing and kills them. After a few days, she flies out of the hive, rushes upward, and several dozen drones fly behind her. This is the mating flight of the female and males. After fertilization, the female returns to the hive and begins laying eggs. Only the queen and worker bees overwinter in the hive. Drone worker bees in the fall         Propolis, or bee glue - Contains essential oils, wax, pollen. Medicinal properties: Pain reliever (5.2 times stronger than novocaine). Antipruritic, antimicrobial. Tones the body, improves immunity. Strengthens tooth enamel. Anesthetizes and softens calluses.       Contains mineral salts, trace elements, sex hormones, vitamins, folic acid. Increases the content of red blood cells and hemoglobin in the blood. Increases appetite and weight. Stimulates hair growth. Improves memory and vision. Increases immunity.    This product is produced by the wax glands of bees. The composition of wax is complex and not fully understood. The wax is very rich in vitamin A, necessary for the development of the epithelium of the skin, bronchial mucosa, throat, nose, stomach and intestines, and for visual acuity. It has antimicrobial, nourishing and regenerating effects.       Therapeutic effect: Has a pronounced anti-inflammatory, analgesic effect. Increases the body's overall resistance and immunity. Dilates blood vessels, lowers blood pressure. Reduces blood viscosity and clotting. Reduces blood cholesterol.     The thread is formed when the liquid secreted on the lower lip from the silk gland hardens. Silkworm breeding began in China about 5 thousand years ago. During the process of domestication, female silkworms stopped flying. Females lay 300-600 eggs. The eggs are covered with a dense shell of chitin and are called grena.    They are fed mulberry leaves. Caterpillars grow and moult. After the fourth molt, brooms made of dry twigs - cocoon racks - are placed on the shelves. Caterpillars crawl onto them, spin cocoons and pupate. The cocoons are collected and some of them are sent to special stations to obtain greens, while the rest are sent to factories, where they are treated with hot steam and unwound on special machines. The threads are used to make silk, and the frozen pupae are used to feed farm animals.       The largest insects are inhabitants of the tropics. The limbs used for movement are located on the thoracic and abdominal sections. All species of ants and termites are social insects. Most insects are pests. The most numerous order of insects are beetles. All insects have a pupal stage.       The science that studies insects is called... Order "Coleoptera" or... Order "Hemiptera" or... Order "Lepidoptera" or... Among insects with complete transformation, the only order, all of whose representatives are wingless... Insect collectors cause the greatest damage...       1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Beekeeping. Insecticides. Polymorphism. Malpighian vessels “Baskets” “Mirrors”     1. Name the insect guardians of “patents for technical inventions”. 2. Which insects are social and what benefits does a social lifestyle provide? 3. Why is the “blood” (hemolymph) of insects usually colorless and very rarely red? 4. Why can’t you immediately kill a wasp or bee that stings you?  1. The bee has “navigation” equipment, dragonflies and some flies are capable of hovering in the air in flight and sharply moving sideways and backwards at high speed; The caterpillars of the corn borer and pear borer do not freeze during strong cooling due to the presence of “antifreeze.”    They live in large colonies. Each colony is one family, the offspring of one female. They are characterized by division of labor, protection, and a certain microclimate (temperature, humidity) is maintained in their homes, which is inaccessible to solitary species.   Since it is not of great importance for supplying tissues with oxygen. It serves, first of all, to transport nutrients coming from the intestines, remove metabolic products from cells, and distribute hormones in cells. Red “blood”, for example, in bloodworms is the larvae of the bell-bellied mosquito. Hemoglobin serves to bind and store oxygen (bloodworms live in muddy soil where there is not enough oxygen)  Special chemicals are released (the “smell of alarm”), which put nearby relatives into an aggressive state. Defending the nest, they fly to the source of the smell and actively sting the enemy.

Types of domestic insects.

Of all the known insects, humans have domesticated only the honey bee and the silkworm. When breeding bees, it was possible to have honey and wax, and when breeding silkworms, silk was possible.

Bee family.

Features of the structure and behavior of worker bees.

On the underside of the worker bee's abdomen there are smooth areas called speculum. Wax is released onto their surface. Bees make hexagonal cells from it - honeycombs: large, medium and small. On the hind legs of bees there is one “basket” and one “brush”. With their help, they collect flower pollen. Having arrived at the hive, the bees place it in the cells of the honeycomb. Other worker bees compact the pollen and soak it in honey. Bee bread is formed - a supply of protein feed. The bees regurgitate the nectar collected from flowers into cells from the honey crop. Here it turns into honey - a supply of sugary food. “Milk” is produced in special glands of worker bees. They feed the queen and larvae with it. At the end of the abdomen of worker bees there is a retractable serrated sting associated with a poison gland and used for protection.

Worker bees also perform other work: ventilate the hive, clean it, seal the cracks, etc. Each of them goes through all types of activities during its life as it develops certain glands.

Bee development.

The uterus lays fertilized eggs in large and small cells, and unfertilized eggs in medium cells. The worker bees feed the larvae hatched from the eggs with “milk”. Then only the larvae of large cells receive the “milk”, the rest receive pollen and honey. After the last molt of the larvae, the worker bees seal the cells with wax. Soon the larvae pupate, and then adult insects emerge from the pupae. They gnaw through the wax caps and crawl out to the surface of the honeycomb. Queens emerge from large cells, drones emerge from medium cells, and worker bees emerge from small cells.

Silkworm.

Over the past decades, various breeds of silkworms have been developed, differing in the size of the cocoons, their color, length and strength of the thread.

Articles and publications:

Characteristics of the Pumpkin family. Female and male flower. Flower formulas. Indicate vegetable plants from this family
Cucurbitaceae - annual or perennial, climbing or creeping herbs, less often shrubs, with alternate, palmate or pinnate (less often separate) or simple leaves. Most members of the family are equipped with antennae,...

Floristic completeness and incompleteness of phytocenoses. The main reasons for the incompleteness of phytocenoses. Practical significance of identifying incomplete phytocenoses.
By floristically incomplete phytocenoses he understood communities that do not include all plant species that can exist in them. Ramensky identified phytocenoses that are absolutely complete, natively complete, practically...

Solving the problem of reagent incompatibility
In organic synthesis, one common practical problem is achieving efficient contact between non-polar organic components and inorganic salts. There are many examples of important reactions in which...

1, 2. What is the composition of a bee colony? What functions do worker bees perform?

The honey bee is a domesticated insect. Lives in hives built by humans. The large bee family is divided into three castes: female workers who perform all types of work in the hive and collect pollen and nectar, the queen female who lays eggs, and males (drones) who perform only the function of fertilizing the queen female. Individuals of the three castes differ in the external structure and structure of the genital organs. The largest bee in the family is the queen (queen). Males are smaller than queens. The smallest ones are worker bees. The queen bee lays fertilized eggs in the cells of the honeycomb, from which the larvae of worker bees or the young queen emerge. This depends on the type of food that the larvae feed on.

Drones develop from unfertilized eggs laid by the queen in the cells of honeycombs.

The honey bee supplies humans with healing honey, propolis, and wax.

Bee venom and preparations made from it are used to treat various human diseases.

3. What adaptations do worker bees have for collecting pollen?

Worker bees have a basket and a brush on the back pair of legs to collect pollen. The pollen collected from the body of the insect with a brush is formed by rubbing the limbs into a lump, placed in a basket and delivered to the hive. Pollen soaked in honey (beebread) is food for bee larvae.

4. When do bees swarm? What is it connected with?

During the breeding season, many worker bees are hatched in the hive, followed by drones and a young queen. With the emergence of the young queen, swarming begins. The old queen leaves the hive with some of the worker bees and looks for a suitable place to found a new family. Thus, as a result of swarming, a new family of bees is formed.

The young queen remaining in the hive destroys the larvae in other queen cells, since repeated swarming weakens the colony. After a few days, the young queen flies out of the hive, followed by the drones. After completing the mating flight, the fertilized young queen returns to the hive. The drones are expelled from the hive and die. The uterus lives 4 years - 5 years.

5. What is propolis? What is its use in the hive?

Propolis is bee glue, which is a product of the processing of resinous substances from the buds of various plants by the special glands of the bee. It has a high antimicrobial effect and is used by bees to seal cracks in the hive.

6. How do bees benefit from living together in a hive?

See answer to question 6, paragraph 24.

7. What are insect protection measures?

First of all, each of us should observe the ban on collecting and collecting insects. It is for this reason that many species of insects, beautiful in appearance and large in size, have become rare and were listed in the Red Book of the Republic of Belarus. The cultivation of honey plants - clover, sweet clover, and buckwheat - plays a major role in maintaining a high number of pollinating insects. Islands of shrubs and trees left among fields, cultivated meadows and pastures provide shelter and refuge for various types of insects.