How do they make their nests?

Back to the bees!

How do honeybees make their nests? Would you believe that they make all of the wax combs themselves? Where do they get all that wax from? They make it inside their own bodies and it comes out of their abdomens. The organs that make the wax are called wax glands. Here is a picture of a bee making wax.

See that white stuff coming out of her abdomen? A honeybee worker has 8 of these glands, as you can see- four on each side of the abdomen. They squeeze the wax out of their wax glands, then collect it with their mouths and mold like clay, adding it wherever it is needed in the beehive to make their hexagon-shaped cells.

Wild bees hang their combs wherever they can in the hollow tree or other hollow space that they have chosen for a nest. Beekeepers give their bees frames to make their combs in so that the beekeeper can easily move the combs around and gather the honey. Here is a picture of one of those frames with its base, or foundation. The foundation has a hexagon shape printed into it so that the bees will make nice, straight comb for the beekeepers.

Wax gland photo from Denver Beekeeper's Association.

Link to Soil Safari app

Soil Safari activity by Discovery Education

How many different kinds of soil are there?

One of you realized from our soil lesson that there were many different kinds of soil. We talked about the three basic particle types of soil. The biggest particles are sand, the medium-sized particles silt, and the smallest particles called clay. Particle types determine the soil's texture. Soil scientists have a classification system using a triangle graph to represent how much of the soil contains each of the three types of particles.

But this is just the beginning of how soil scientists name and classify soil types. There are actually 12 different basic kinds of soil. They are classified by many different features such as texture, kinds of rocks and minerals that the soil comes from, the pH, the environment, and the plants and animals that are present in the soil. Within these 12 basic kinds or soil orders there are many different specific types of soil that are usually named after the place where they were first discovered. These types are called series. In the area of Philipsburg, there is a lot of the soil series called "Andover" for example.

For more information on the 12 soil orders, visit the University of Idaho's Soil Website.

Soil taxonomy poster from soils.usda.gov.

Can people walk on water? (VIDEOS!)

This is a question that came out of the science question box. I decided to keep it lively here by taking a little break from bees. My short answer? No.

What about these guys?

Well, the shoe company that made this ad later admitted that the videos were fake.

Walking on water is actually kind of a common magical trick. Here's a video of the "Masked Magician" showing you how the trick is done in a swimming pool with plastic platforms.


But then how, pray tell, do I explain the little basilisk lizard (aka "The Jesus Lizard" -get it- because it walks on water)? No special effects involved here!

Well, basilisk lizards are a lot smaller than us, and a lot lighter. Water has enough surface tension (strength at its surface) to let small, light things sit or run on the surface. Surface tension comes from the way that water molecules are attracted to each other, so they don't break apart as easily. Also, the basilisk lizard has large feet that spread out when they hit the surface of the water to spread out its weight kind of like wings.

Try this at home to see water's surface tension at work! The surface tension holds a lot more water on the penny than you would think it could!



Bugs are even better at this than basilisk lizards. Behold: The Water Strider!

Scientific Illustration

I know, it's not a question. This time I am writing just to show you something fun that I learned about today. Today I learned about scientific illustrators. This is a career that involves drawing pictures of things like animals and plants and rocks so that we can understand them better. Remember when we drew a picture of our seed sprouting and labeled the shoot and the root and the cotyledons? Like that, except with everything, not just seeds. Here are some links and some great examples of world-class scientific illustration.

• California State University Science Illustration program
• Association of Medical Illustrators
• Alison Schroeer entomological illustrations
• Scientific Illustration tumblog
  
• Guild of Natural Science Illustrators

Anglerfish and Amaranthus images by Flickr user Matt Danko. Corn seedling image by Azusa Okuwa.