How do you tell a boy bee from a girl bee?

We talked about the worker bees and that they are all female. What about the boys? There aren't as many male bees in the hive as there are female bees. This is because the queen can decide when she lays an egg whether or not the egg will be male or female. Neat trick, eh? Why doesn't she lay more male eggs? Because male honeybees don't work! The female worker bees do all the work in the hive: cleaning cells, feeding baby bees, making honey, gathering pollen and nectar, guarding the hive. What do the male bees do?

Not much. Well, not much in the beehive. We call the male bees drones. The drones don't do any of the work that the female worker bees do. Beekeepers have always known that the drones don't work. The word drone is even used to tease people about being lazy! But surely the honeybee drones do something. What do the drones bees do? Maybe we can find out something about what they do by comparing them to the worker bees. Notice in this picture of a drone above that the drone has very large eyes. Here's a comparison of the three types of bees side-by-side. The drone bee definitely has the biggest eyes of the three. That makes me think that they probably do something that requires very good vision.

Each day, the drones will fly out of the hive and go to a meeting place outside the hive called a "drone congregation area." They wait there, all flying around like they're waiting for something to happen. Suddenly, a queen bee flies through the drone congregation area at top speed and the drones zip after her. If they catch up with her they will mate with her. So that must be why they need such big eyes! They need to see that queen flying by to catch her!

Drone photo from http://informedfarmers.com. Comparison image from http://www.bees-online.com

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.

Why are some cells darker than others?

When the comb is brand new, it is white to light yellow. When the bees make new comb we call it "drawing out the comb." Here is a freshly drawn comb.

The comb starts to get darker as it ages. Depending on what is stored in the comb, it will get darker faster. Honey comb doesn't get very dark because honey and nectar are almost clear and cannot color the comb very much. Cells in comb that are used for baby bees (eggs, larvae, and pupae), however, get very dark. That is because that honeybees, like moths, spin a cocoon when they pupate. This cocoon is made of silk strands that come from the mouth of the larva inside. You can't see the cocoon very well because of that wax cap the worker bees put over the cell when the larva when it starts to pupate. Even when you cut open a cell, it is very hard to see the cocoon because it is so thin and sticks to the wall of the cell like wallpaper. The cocoon is darker than the wax, and it makes the wax cells look darker. Once a bee has emerged from a cell, the cell can be re-used for a new larva, so the next larva will spin its cocoon inside the old cocoon of the last larva. The cocoon layers build up like a stack of paper until the cells look very dark indeed. Here is a cross-sectioned (sliced open) cell with an egg. See all the layers at the bottom? Those are old cocoons built up over years.

The pollen also colors the comb. Pollen is usually yellow, but can be brown, red, orange, white, and even purple.  These colors all get mixed up when the pollen is stored in the cells to make bee bread. The wax gets stained or colored by all the pollen and starts to look dark.


New comb photo from UNL extension.