{"id":7044,"date":"2008-01-23T00:00:31","date_gmt":"2008-01-23T06:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/?p=7044"},"modified":"2017-06-25T16:29:05","modified_gmt":"2017-06-25T21:29:05","slug":"honeybees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/bug-of-the-week\/honeybees\/","title":{"rendered":"Honey Bees (Family Apidae)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Hi BugFans,<\/p>\n<p>Honeybees, famously, live in social groups with strictly defined roles. The workers, all female, have stingers that are vestigial <em>ovipositers<\/em> (egg-depositers, to you classical language scholars). Some workers forage for food, some guard the hive, some are nursery workers and others care for the queen. The queens are the mothers of the hive, and the drones (males) are boy-toys.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/380\/2008\/01\/honeybees-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/380\/2008\/01\/honeybees-1.jpg\" alt=\"honeybees-1\" width=\"500\" height=\"500\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-7046\" srcset=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/380\/2008\/01\/honeybees-1.jpg 500w, https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/380\/2008\/01\/honeybees-1-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/380\/2008\/01\/honeybees-1-300x300.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In the nursery, larval queens in are fed &#8220;royal jelly&#8221;, while the larval worker bees are fed &#8220;bee bread&#8221; (a honey and pollen mix). When the old queen leaves the hive in early summer, accompanied by a group of workers called a swarm\u2014and these can be pretty dramatic\u2014the first larval queen that emerges from her cell kills the other queens in their cells or fights them as they emerge.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/380\/2008\/01\/honeybees-3.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/380\/2008\/01\/honeybees-3.jpg\" alt=\"honeybees-3\" width=\"700\" height=\"500\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-7047\" srcset=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/380\/2008\/01\/honeybees-3.jpg 700w, https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/380\/2008\/01\/honeybees-3-300x214.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Goldenrods and milkweeds are very popular with a huge variety of insects, including predators. If you squint, you can see the ambush bug to the left of the dead bee. Ambush bugs grab their prey firmly and inject a meat tenderizer. They wait until the prey&#8217;s innards have &#8220;liquefied&#8221; (like the old SNL &#8220;Bassomatic&#8221; commercial) and then suck out the juices.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/380\/2008\/01\/honeybees-5.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/380\/2008\/01\/honeybees-5.jpg\" alt=\"honeybees-5\" width=\"500\" height=\"500\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-7048\" srcset=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/380\/2008\/01\/honeybees-5.jpg 500w, https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/380\/2008\/01\/honeybees-5-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/380\/2008\/01\/honeybees-5-300x300.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Milkweeds actually have a tricky pollen set-up.  A bee has to reach into the flower to retrieve the saddle-bag-shaped pollenia. Sometimes when they grab for the pollenia, they can\u2019t turn it properly to pull it out, and their feet get stuck and they die.  <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/380\/2008\/01\/honeybees-6.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/380\/2008\/01\/honeybees-6.jpg\" alt=\"honeybees-6\" width=\"500\" height=\"500\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-7049\" srcset=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/380\/2008\/01\/honeybees-6.jpg 500w, https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/380\/2008\/01\/honeybees-6-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/380\/2008\/01\/honeybees-6-300x300.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Honeybees may store pollen in pollen sacs on their legs as they forage. Studies prove that bees show an amazing &#8220;flower constancy&#8221;&mdash;when bees are actively foraging, more than 95% of the pollen in their pollen sacs comes from the same kind of flower!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/380\/2008\/01\/honeybees-4.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/380\/2008\/01\/honeybees-4.jpg\" alt=\"honeybees-4\" width=\"445\" height=\"408\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-7050\" srcset=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/380\/2008\/01\/honeybees-4.jpg 445w, https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/380\/2008\/01\/honeybees-4-300x275.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 445px) 100vw, 445px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The Native Americans called honeybees, which were imported by European settlers, &#8220;white man&#8217;s flies&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<br \/>\n<em>The BugLady<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Honeybees<\/strong>, famously, live in social groups with strictly defined roles. The workers, all female, have stingers that are vestigial ovipositers. Some workers forage for food, some guard the hive, some are nursery workers and others care for the queen. The queens are the mothers of the hive, and the drones (males) are boy-toys.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3666,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","uwm_wg_additional_authors":[]},"categories":[8],"tags":[238],"class_list":["post-7044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bug-of-the-week","tag-bees"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.2 (Yoast SEO v27.2) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Field Station<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/bug-of-the-week\/honeybees\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Honey Bees (Family Apidae)\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Honeybees, famously, live in social groups with strictly defined roles. 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