Pow 7 Bee Anatomy

There are many different types of bees. But in a hive there are basically, the worker bees, drone bees, and the Queen bee. They all have their individual body types and they are all conveniently in this essay. YAY BEES!

The basic bee anatomy is like almost every other bug. It's got its wings, thorax, antennae, head, compound eye, legs, abdomen, and its famous stinger. To clear things up a bit here's a picture of a basic bee.

The antenna: The antenna of a bee is most largely used for communication, for bees don't make sounds or hear anything. The antenna's almost in the middle of the head. The Queen Bee and the worker bees have longer antennae's than the drones.

The compound eye: A bees head is basically two huge compound eyes and a smaller simpler one in between called the Ocelli. The Ocelli sees different light levels and they are more blurry than ours, but not so much that they are blind. The drone bees have better eyesight than the other bees so that they can chase the Queen Bee in the mating flight. Bees use ultraviolet rays to see. Bees cannot

see red, but can see black, blue, and white. They can see colors we don't.

Tongues: A bees tongue is long and has rings of hair on it, at the end of the tongue is a spoon like thing bristling with hair on the edges yet smooth underneath. This helps the bee to collect pollen.

The Thorax: The Thorax is in between the bees head and abdomen. The legs and wings are attached to the thorax. The thorax has many muscles to help flap the bee's wings.

The Legs: "Each pair of legs are specialized in structure for performing different activities. The front legs are used to clean the head, eyes and mouth and also have a special cleaning apparatus for grooming the antennae. The middle pair of legs are used to clean the body, loosen pollen from the pollen baskets, clean the wings and move wax plates that are secreted from glands on the abdomen. The hind legs are specialized for pollen collection. Each leg is flattened, and on workers are covered with long fringed hairs that form the pollen basket. Pollen grains which adhere to the hairs of the body are brushed back to the inside of the hind leg where they are stored in the pollen basket for carrying back to the hive." Taken from my first source, this is the basic function of legs. Of course none of this really applies for the drones because they are the bees that don't do anything except mate.

The wings: The wings of a bee are veiny and are attached to the thorax. The thorax powers the wings to fly. The first pair of wings are longer than the back two, but they are kept together by a set of "Velcro" hooks.

The Abdomen: There are many parts of the abdomen, there is upper and lower basically. The abdomen holds the reproductive system and the digestive systems. At the end of the abdomen is the stinger.

The Stinger: The stinger of a bee is a bulb-like, which connects the stinger to the poison. The stinger is sharp and hollow, once it breaks your skin, half the abdomen is ripped off and the muscles keep contracting, pushing poison into you body. A piece of advice, the faster you can get the stinger out, the better for you.

Okay, let's start with the Queen Bee. Here's a little back ground info: the Queen Bee's basic job is to lay eggs and make more bees. The special thing is that only a queen bee can lay eggs and it's the only bee that doesn't die after using its stinger. The queen bee is slightly larger than other bees; it's fed "royal jelly" and can lay up to six eggs per minute. That's 120 eggs per hour!