Study Guide Questions Flashcards
(46 cards)
1
Q
What is the scientific name for the European honey bee?
A
Apis mellifera
2
Q
What are the subspecies of apis mellifera?
A
Italian (A. m. linguistica) Caucasian (A. m. caucasica) Carniolan (A. m. cornica) German (A. m. mellifera) African (A. m. scutellate)
3
Q
What are the races of Apis mellifera?
A
Cordovan
Russian
Buckfast
4
Q
What is the scientific name of the Asian honey bee?
A
Apis cerana
Subspecies
-A. c. nuluensis
5
Q
What is the scientific name of the Giant honey bee?
A
Apis dorsata
Subspecies
-A.d. binghami
-A.d. laboriosa
6
Q
What does eusocial mean?
A
- cooperative care of young
- reproductive division of labor
- overlapping generations sharing the
7
Q
What is haplodiploidy
A
A sex determination system in which males develop from unfertilized eggs and are haploid, and females develop from fertilized eggs and are diploid.
8
Q
What are some characteristics of the queen?
A
- larger than workers
- sole reproductive female
- lays 1,000-1500 eggs each day
- Lifespan: 1-5 years
- non-barbed stinger
- ovarioles (~150 each ovary)
- produce pheromones
- spermatheca
9
Q
What are some characteristics of a worker?
A
- facultatively sterile
- hive upkeep and foraging
- 20,000-45,000 and up to 60,000 in the hive
- barbed stinger, dies when stings
- lifespan: ~4-6 weeks in summer, up to several months in winter
- ovarioles (~2-5 each ovary)
- produce pheromones
- pollen baskets, corbicular hairs
10
Q
What are some characteristics of drones?
A
- sexual maturity at ~two weeks
- sole function is mating
- dies after mating, or forced out of colony
11
Q
What is holometabolous?
A
Complete metamorphasis.
Among honey bees:
egg, larva, pupa, adult
12
Q
How many days does it take for an egg to develop to adult emergence?
- queen
- workers
- drones?
A
- queen: 16 days
- workers: 21 days
- drones: 24 days
13
Q
How many drones does a queen typically mate with?
A
12-14
14
Q
What is the timeline for a queen to be mated?
A
- a single virgin queen will survive and will mate within a week
- queens mate with multiple drones (12-14) , mated sign
- should start egg-laying within a week of being mated
15
Q
All female larva are fed the same diet for _____ days.
A
Three days
16
Q
What distinguishes queen development from worker development?
A
- Queens are continually fed royal jelly
- special protein (royalactin)
- certain plant compounds are absent
- Workers are fed brood food
- a mix of glandular secretions, pollen and honey
17
Q
By the _____ instar, there are significant differences in the developing ovaries between the castes.
A
Fifth
18
Q
What is apoptosis?
A
The death of cells which occurs as a normal and controlled part of an organism’s growth or development.. There is widespread apoptosis of worker’s ovaries.
19
Q
What is the age range of house bees?
A
~1-20 days old
20
Q
What are the tasks of house bees?
A
- comb building
- hive cleaning
- undertakers
- brood, queen and drone care
- hive guarding
- climate control
- storing/use of nectar, pollen and propolis
21
Q
How old are forager bees?
A
~20 days old until death, which is highly variable
22
Q
What are tasks of forager bees?
A
- nectar (wax production, honey production)
- pollen (proteins for food)
- water (hydration, climate control)
- plant resins (propolis = sealant = antimicrobial)
23
Q
What are the three conditions under which queens are created?
A
- swarming (natural process of colony production)
- supersedure (current queen is replaced due to injury, laying fewer eggs, more drones)
- emergency (queen dies or we squash her)
24
Q
What are the differences between a virgin and mated queen?
A
Virgin
- moves erratically
- slender
- no retinue
- flies readily
Mated
- moves slowly and predictably
- large abdomen
- will only fly if swarming
- retinue present
25
What is a "mating sign"?
Mating occurs on the wing, and drones leave a mating sign — remnants of the reproductive tract of the last one to two drones she mated with
26
Each drones produce _____ of semen, and there is _____ per each microliter.
Each drone produces ~0.5 -3 microliters of semen, and there's ~5 million sperm per one microliter.
27
Queens receive between _____ million sperm during mating and store between _____ million.
Queens receive between 87-200 million sperm and store 4-8 million.
28
What are the changes in a queen post mating?
- queen activates her ovaries and initiates egg laying (~1,500 eggs per day)
- queen is no longer phototactic, won't fly unless the colony swarms
- she has changes in her pheromone profiles
- there's a large change in her gene expression
29
What are the causes of suboptimal mating?
- poor quality of queens or drones
- poor rearing conditions and/or nutrition, environmental toxins, parasites, disease
- poor mating conditions, bad weather
- lack of healthy drones
30
What are the consequences of suboptimal mating?
- reduced stored amounts of sperm (queen runs out of sperm faster, resulting in supersedure or drone layer
- reduced genetic diversity in the colony (genetic diversity is critical for disease resistance and productivity
- suboptimal pheromone production (queen produced a less attractive pheromone blend and are more likely to be superseded)
31
The characteristics of a queenless colony are:
- queen pheromone is absent
- worker ovaries can be become activated and they begin to lay only males/drones
- hopelessly queenless colony rarely accepts new queen
32
Who produces pheromones?
- queens: composition depends on age, mating status, and qualities; regulates social organization of the colony and has many effects of workers
- brood: communicates if larva are hungry, ready to be capped
- worker: alarm pheromone
33
Communicate can be chemical and physical (dance).
- chemical
- identification of colony members
- each colony has its own smell
- workers use it to identify intruding bees
- dance
- Carl von Frisch - Austrian zoologist crakced the dance code (foraging) of honey bees
- round up (up to about 50-100 yards) versus waggle dance (direction, distance greater than 500 to 100 yards, quality)
- scouts communicate information about potential new nests during swarming
34
The morphological role of the honey bee head:
- information processing
- food and pheromone production
- feeding
35
The morphological role of the honey bee thorax:
- locomotion (legs and wings)
| - pollen collection
36
The morphological role of the honey bee abdomen:
- digestion
| - reproduction
37
External structures of the honey bee include:
- antennae
- mandibles
- compound eyes and ocelli
- hamulii (wing hooks)
- corbicula (for pollen collection
38
Internal structures of the honey bee include:
- mushroom body (info processing)
- glands (mandibular, hypopharengeal, wax)
- crop (nectar foraging)
- spermatheca (queen sperm storage)
- ovarioles (queens and workers)
- venom sac (queen and workers)
39
Vertical transmission of pathogens means:
-transmitted from mother to offspring
40
Horizontal transmission of pathogens means:
- transmission among individuals
- trophallaxis
- food
- fecal route
- STDs
- via parasites (varroa mites)
41
What are fomites?
Objects that carry pathogens, beekeeping equipment, hive tools, protective equipment
42
What is individual immunity?
- Innate: Immediate, general defense against pathogens, intrinsic ability of the organism to defend itself agains non-self (present without previous exposure to a pathogen)
- Adaptive: Specialized response, once exposed to a specific pathogen individual retains ability to respond to this challenge (it can create a "memory" of a pathogen so subsequent exposure causes faster response
43
What is social immunity?
- collective defenses against pathogens and parasites
- hygienic behavior: workers detect and remove parasitized or infected immatures
- social fever: workers increase temperature
- self-medicating: propolis
- self-removal: undertaking
44
What modulates immune responses?
1. Developmental stage and caste
2. Parasite infection
3. Nutrition
45
Essential components of the Langstroth hive:
1. Bottom board: Screened, solid
2. Frames: Foundationless, plastic, wood w/ plastic
3. Covers: migratory, telescoping
4. Brood boxes: Deep, medium, shallow
46
Ways to obtain honey bees:
Packages
- 3lbs of bees
- mated queen can be included
- shake bees on to your equipment
Nucs
- 3 to 5 frames of bees
- mated, laying queen included
- usually build up faster than packages
Splits
- split a strong colony into multiple
- can naturally requeen, add queen cells, introduce a queen
Swarms
-make sure to buy a queen!
