If you want to talk about the characteristics of small bees, you will definitely think of two words: hard-working.
Many of the behaviors of bees, whether related to "social" or "individual", are full of mysterious highlights: they have their own unique language system, and occasionally they will play tricks...
Where's the nectar? All the moves
In the colony, older workers act as scouts: once they have found a good source of honey, they return to the nest to spread the word. The launch is conducted through a dance performance, and the nectar information is "encoded" in the dance language.
First, the "scout" worker bees bring back small amounts of pollen or nectar, indicating the species of the source flower. It then performs a "bee dance" on the "dance zone" (the outer facade of the nest) near the mouth of the hive.
According to the distance of the honey source, the bee dance can be roughly divided into three types: "round dance", "sickle dance" and "figure 8 dance". Other workers in the hive (" foragers ") watch the dance and then fly out to search for honey based on the information indicated by the dance. The scout bees stayed put and continued to dance over and over again - the more repetitions, the richer the nectar source.
1：round dance
When the source of honey is within 50 meters of the hive, the scout bees do a circle dance: they circle and circle, climb forward once, then reverse once, and repeat.
2：sickle dance
When the honey source and the hive are between 50 and 150 meters apart, the scout bees do the scythe dance: a lazy version of the circle dance, turning back before climbing a circle (mostly about half a circle). The figure repeatedly painted on the dance track is like a sickle, and like a new moon, so it is also called "new moon dance".
The round dance and the sickle dance only announce the distance of the nectar source, and there is no direction information. After the worker bees go out, they circle the hive and search. Because it's close to the nest, you can find it in a few laps.
3：8 dance
When the distance between the honey source and the hive is more than 150 meters, the scout bees dance the eight-figure dance: first walk in a straight line, and "twist their hips" while walking (so it is also called "swing dance"); Go straight for a distance and then turn to one side, stop rocking, and draw a semicircle back to the starting point; Then swing straight again; Stop rocking at the end of the last one and climb back to the starting point in a semicircle on the other side - the route is like the number "8" written horizontally, and so on.
The Figure of eight dance not only contains information about the distance of the honey source, but also indicates the location. The focus is on the "swinging straight stage", the longer the track length and duration, the farther the nectar source. The direction of the straight line (that is, the direction pointed by the bee's head) indicates the direction of the honey source.
Bee-eyed flowers prefer purple and yellow
Don't look at the bees shuttling through the colorful flowers, in fact, in their eyes, see the color is different from us. The sensitivity band of bee visual cells has a higher overall frequency than that of humans. Therefore, they are sensitive to blue and purple, and can see ultraviolet light that is difficult for the human eye to recognize; But they're blind to red, and they're black. So bees prefer blue, purple and yellow flowers.
- Bees make honey without pollinating
The nectar of plants is not given to bees for free, the purpose is to attract bees to spread pollen, which is equivalent to paying labor fees. Therefore, the nectaries secreting nectar in plants are mostly located at the base of the stamen and deep in the corolla tube, in order to attract bees to go deep and take away more pollen.
Bees are usually well-behaved into flowers to get honey, but there are a few cases, will be opportunistic, take "money" to do nothing. Bumblebees are big and have powerful jaws. When they encounter the delicate corolla tube can not drill into, or food shortage, hunger (greed) is very, sometimes they will take - directly bite through the corolla tube "steal honey", even at the cost of biting off the whole flower.
And some small bees, obviously can drill flowers to collect honey, but prefer to stay at the scene of stealing honey, such as bumblebees after eating a few bites, enjoy the benefits.
To put it bluntly, lazy!
- Not getting enough sleep, not finding a home
Whenever beekeepers check hives at night, they always find bees flapping their wings in defense, one by one in good spirits. So it used to be thought that bees don't sleep at all. It wasn't until the 1980s, when scientists studied the brain waves of bees, that it was officially confirmed that bees sleep. Because when animals sleep, their brain waves have certain patterns.
But the bees sleep without obvious features, it looks like the usual, but the muscles are more relaxed, the legs and wings are relaxed, and the antennae, which usually move constantly, will be still and slightly open. And bees sleep very alert, slightly disturbed will wake up, ready to fight at any time, only to give people the illusion of not sleeping.
At night, bees usually return to their nests for the night. But if you run too far, or it rains and you can't get home, you can only deal with the grass and flowers for a night. Bees sleep an average of five to eight hours a day, and they also take naps during the day when they are sleepy.