Of great importance in the national economy is such an industry as beekeeping. Its main product is honey. It is not only tasty and nutritious, but also very healthy. Since ancient times, it has been used by humans for food and is used to treat many diseases, for example, sore throats or is prescribed for colds.
Beeswax is necessary for the manufacture of artificial wax, without which the implementation of beekeeping cannot be imagined. The so-called bee glue - propolis also finds its sales. A lot of work should have been done before classifying bees into species, genera, families, orders, classes, types.
Bee families
According to the genus, bees are divided into wild and domestic. Both genders tend to live in families. A wild or domestic honey bee develops from an egg and, as you know, is considered a single labor unit.
Evolution has shown that their joint stay is a necessity, and therefore a person working with bees does not deal with individuals, but with the whole family as a full-fledged business unit. For a long time away from the family, the life of a honey bee cannot take place, since it is completely dependent on it.
Bee family members
What is the bee family itself made of? The main members of the family are many working bees and the uterus. In the summer, you can also see drones, the appearance of which is due to seasonality. The uterus and working bees are female. However, due to the lack of normally developed genitals in the second, only the uterus can mate with a drone, and subsequently lay eggs. The process of egg laying is suspended (and in some cases completely terminated) when there is a lack of feed, as well as in connection with a low ambient temperature.
Bee species
Thanks to numerous studies, it became known that the genus of bees is divided into four groups. Types of honey bees are represented by large Indian bees, medium Indian bees, small Indian bees and directly honey bees. Of particular interest is the honey bee.
An important distinguishing feature of these insects is that regardless of whether it is a wild or domestic honey bee, they add honey separately from the brood. This is very convenient, because in this case a person carefully selects a certain part of it and does not damage the honeycomb.
Habitat
Types of honey bees determine their location: a bee bred by humans lives in a hive, and a wild bee lives in hollows of trees in a forest or in the ground, that is, it seeks refuge in places where there is no negative impact of the external environment. In comfortable conditions, honey is tastier, and its quantity is much larger.
A wild or domestic honey bee, having found a comfortable position for itself, begins to build a wax honeycomb, which consists of numerous cells. Bees put pollen (bee bread) and honey directly here. The structure of the honeycomb itself occurs in a downward direction. Over time, the construction of honeycombs expands in length and breadth, later merging into a single honeycomb. A normal honeycomb has a white color and a thickness of 22-25 mm. However, it tends to darken if bees or drones have been hatched or continue to be hatched. A strong family with a moderate load during the spring-summer period can allocate up to two kilograms of wax for construction.
How long is a bee
The wild or domestic honey bee has a rather short lifespan: in summer it is two to three months. If we are talking about a wintering working bee, then we should talk about a longer life expectancy - from six months to eight months. The life of a bee as a whole depends on its “calculation” during operation.
Worker bees carry out most of the functions in the family and do all kinds of work, except laying eggs. The wide scope of the work performed by bees is a completely understandable fact, because the body of an average bee is predisposed and adapted by nature to perform work:
- they have excellent sense of smell, so they find and recognize food;
- the vision of the honey bee is excellent;
- Well-developed wings, through which the hive is ventilated;
- devices on the legs that they use to collect pollen;
- a sting - a means of defense against the invasion of enemies.
A feature is the presence of glands in bees that produce milk for feeding larvae.
Bee biology
The originality of the species is fully demonstrated by the biology of the honey bee. Due to the presence of four pairs of wax glands, the working bee is able to produce wax. These glands are not developed in a bee that has just hatched, but their presence becomes noticeable after three to five days.
Bees feed on food of two consistencies: solid (feathery) and liquid (nectar and honey). Therefore, it should be noted that the mouth parts of the bee are adapted for both the first and second food. Malpighian vessels (multiple tubes of different lengths) and the fat body serve as the organs of excretion of the bee. It is thanks to them that bees can secrete decay products arising in the metabolic process: uric acid, carbon dioxide, salts. The bees circulatory system is open and is represented by a five-chamber heart and aorta. The blood of a bee is colorless.
