Honey Bee (1940)

three kinds of bees nest these are worker bees they are females who take care of the nest and collect food from flowers through a microscope we will look at a worker bee the sting is at the tip of the abdomen they have combs on the legs bees have compound eyes made up of many facets each a little eye in itself these drones have no stings they are males and do no work except to mate with the Queen the large be in the center is the queen when she finds food in a well she sticks in her tongue and eats the workers also keep the Queen clean [Music] they bathe and comb her her only task is to lay eggs but first the workers clean out the cells they lick the cells with their tongues the Queen the one moving her body is about to lay an egg in section view we see her depositing the egg the egg is glued to the bottom of the cell after three days the eggs hatch into larvae workers acting as nurses feed them these larvae are three days old until now they have been fed royal jelly from glands in the mouth of a worker this worker is opening a honey cell of stored honey to feed the larvae what this also makes stored pollen into food for the larvae after the third day these foods are given to larvae which will develop into workers or drones notice how a worker deposits food for this four day old larvae after six days the larvae spins a cocoon inside this cocoon it will change into a full-grown B first the larva sheds its skin and changes into a pupa as we see here with the action speeded up the larvae stay in the cocoon for 12 days and develop into adults bees then each bee starts to gnaw its way out of the cocoon and the cell the head comes out first it takes a little time and requires some effort then at last the bee emerges and is ready to do its work in the nest the first task of the young workers is to feed the larvae in the nest as they grow older the workers ventilate the nest by Fanning with their wings later they become guards of the nest a bumblebee accidentally enters the card sense that it is a stranger the please attack the intruder and sting it to death but they also die as they try to remove their stings from the body of the victim other guards dragged the dead bumblebee to the entrance and push it out in the summertime when the nest becomes full of eggs and larvae the workers get ready to raise a new queen they select a female larva which they will rear to become a queen they tear apart her cell and enlarge it Queens are bigger than workers are drawn and need larger cells the workers feed the Queen larvae royal jelly only other bee larvae received pollen and honey after the third day the Queen larva grows very quickly after five and a half days the workers seal up the Queen cell inside her cell the Queen larvae is immersed in royal jelly she will change from a grub to a pupa and finally into an adult queen in the meantime the old queen and the field bees prepare to leave the nest and the cap over her cell and emerges as a full-grown Queen the new queen has found another Queen cell in the nest she tears the cell apart this Queen larvae will die here is another adult Queen Bee just hatching from itself the two queens meet and fight a life-and-death struggle the one Queen stings her rival to death but the victor does not die because her sting can be removed from her victim the more trees watched the battle the field bees which left the nest were the old queen settle temporarily on a branch the nest bees stay with a new queen Scout bees leave the swarm and look for a place to build a new nest when the scouts have found a suitable place for a nest the thousands of bees in the swarm followed them to it the swarm makes a beeline toward its new home after the swarm settled the workers start to build a new comb these bees are making wax the wax is secreted by scales on the underside of the abdomen and is scraped off with a sharp hind legs the worker then takes the wax into her mouth and chews it until it is stopped many bees working together scooped out the wax dabs and shape them into cells watch the be at the left these workers are gathering food for the new nest at the same time they cross pollinate the flowers thereby helping them to produce seeds through a magnifying glass we see a worker gathering food this is where the bees get the nectar these are the anthers which contain the pollen a worker sips nectar from the blossom with its long sucking mouth and stores it in her body in a honey sack when the bee returns to the nest she circles around the cells this is called the huh dance then she brings up the nectar from the honey sack into her mouth there it is mixed with secretions which change it into honey she deposits the mixture in a honey cell when bees visit flowers they get the powder like pollen on the hairs of the body with the cones on its legs the bee brushes the pollen from its body into the pollen basket on each hind leg the B actually packs the pollen into these sacks until they bulge flight is a little difficult with such a heavy load the bee carries the pollen to the nest in these baskets back in the nest the worker dances around doing a pollen jig before she deposits the pollen she prized off the pollen pellets and packs them tightly into a pollen cell the bees used pollen to make bees bread extra food is stored here in the comb for the bees that will live through the cold winter season throughout the year worker bees are busy caring for their house of wax bees perform two important services they help to cross pollinate many kinds of flowers and they give us honey which through the ages has been an important food of man