4. What happens during and after the mating flight of the honeybees?
- But here’s the short story: a queen is selectively bred in a special "queen cell" in the hive and fed royal jelly by worker bees to induce her to become sexually mature.
A virgin queen that survives to adulthood without being killed by her rivals will take a mating flight with a dozen or so male drones (out of tens of thousands eligible bachelors in the colony).
-The mating flight follows a pattern. The virgin queen flies to a congregation area where hundreds or thousands of unrelated drones(.the male honey bees are called drones, and they do not work at all, have no stinger, all they do is mating.) await. The drones pursue the queen and several mate with her in flight.
- Drones start to search the queen. A swarm of drones assemble at special places where queen comes. They are attracted by pheromone, substance secreted by queen.
- After mating, drone dies, so queen flies away alone. On average, the queen mates approximately 8 to 9 times.
5. Describe different ways in which animals can communicate and give some examples of each.
-sounds: Bees communicate with each other about food sources using dances. The sounds from the movement of the bees is picked up by the tiny hairs on the bee's head.
-signals for example ‘dances’ e.g. in the case of honeybees:
Honey bee workers perform a series of movements, often referred to as the "waggle dance," to teach other workers the location of food sources
- The round dance, a series of narrow circular movements, alerts colony members to the presence of food within 50 meters of the hive. This dance only communicates the direction of the supply, not the distance (tells other bees that food is close by).
- The honey bee first walks straight ahead, vigorously shaking its abdomen and producing a buzzing sound with the beat of its wings. The distance and speed of this movement communicates the distance of the foraging site to the others. Communicating direction becomes more complex, as the dancing bee aligns her body in the direction of the food, relative to the sun. The entire dance pattern is a figure-eight, with the bee repeating the straight portion of the movement each time it circles to the center again.-The figure of eight dance tells other bees the direction and how far away the food is.
-figure of eight dance is also called the ‘waggle dance’
Waggle dance: indicating that food is farther away, while the is a short version of the , indicating that food is nearby.
-chemicals (pheromones)
e.g. Honeybees check bees returning to the hive by touching them with their antennae (feelers). If the bee is from another hive, they drive it away.
Pheromones play a role in the defense of the hive as well. When a worker honey bee stings, it produces a pheromone that alerts her fellow workers to the threat. That's why a careless intruder may suffer numerous stings if a honey bee colony is disturbed.
produced by the queen control reproduction in the hive. She emits pheromones that keep female workers disinterested in mating, and also uses pheromones to encourage male drones to mate with her. The queen bee produces a unique odor that tells the community she is alive and well. When a beekeeper introduces a new queen to a colony, she must keep the queen in a separate cage within the hive for several days, to familiarize the bees with her smell.
