all about bees

1. ALL ABOUT
BEES
BY SHAM SAIB (10-A)
UNITED SCIENCE GIRL’S COLLEGE
21/4/2019

2. SO, WHAT ARE BEES
EXACTLY?
 Bees are flying insets closely
related to wasps and ants.
 They come from the family
Apoidea and they are divided into
9 other families >>>
 There are about 20,000 species
out there.
 Bees have yellow/orange and
black stripes on their bodies
 Bees have a haploid-diploid
breeding system.

3. pollination:
 Bees feed on the nectar and
pollen from the flower
 flowers reproduce by
transferring pollen from the
anthers to the stigma.
 Bees carry the pollen by their legs from flower to flower
which results in genetic
diversity.
 This means, the interaction between bees and flowers is a
mutualistic relationship.
BEES ARE GREAT
POLLINATORS

4. HOW BEES LOCATE
FLOWERS
1. A bee’s sense of
direction is by
their sense of
smell.
2. Bees
communicate to
each other by the
waggle dance.

5. 2 MAJOR TYPES OF
BEES
1)SOLITARY BEES 2) COMMUNAL BEES

6.  Solitary bees live alone.
 solitary bees are all
female.
 They don’t produce bees
wax or honey.
 They live in holes in the
wood, in the ground or in
hollow twigs
 Examples; carpenter
bees, leafcutter bees and
mason bees.
SOLITARY BEES

7. COMMUNAL
BEES
• They share a
nest together
and live in
colonies
• The most
common types
are; bumble
bees, stingless
bees and honey
bees.

8.  Honey bees make honey.
 They can make colonies as large as 80,000 bees.
 They are the number one pollinator insects on the planet.
 Each bee has a specific role in the colony, which is divided
into 3 roles:
HONEY BEES

9. 1) THE QUEEN BEE
 Female
 2cm’s big
 Can live up to 5 years
 There can be only one
queen in a colony.
 It’s role is to produce eggs
and send chemical signals
to guide the bees

10. 2) THE DRONES 3)THE WORKERS
 Drones are male bees
 Their role is to fertilize
the queen.
 They only live during the
spring and summer
 Worker bees are females
 They take up 98% of the hive.
 They do the most work, they
look for pollen, protect the
hive, clean, circulate air and
make the honey.

11. HOW HONEY BEES MAKE
HONEY
 Worker bees make honey from the nectar of flowers.
 worker bees store that nectar in their “honey stomach”.
 Worker bees digest this nectar in their stomach by it’s enzymes.
 Then the worker bee throws up this substance into another
bees mouth, then the other bee
does the same thing again and
The cycle continuous until the
honey is ready.
 The bees store the honey in one
of their “cells”.
 They harden the honey and seal
it afterwards.

12. THE IMPORTANCE OF
BEES
Why are bees important :
 1/3 of our crops are pollinated by
bees, such as,( cotton, apples,
onions, cherries, tomatoes, coffee
…etc.)
 Plants that are pollinated by bees
are the foundation of terrestrial
food chains.
 If bees go extinct, we would go
extinct a few years later.

13. HOW TO HELP BEES
In the last several years scientists and farmers have noticed that the
population bees have decreased dramatically, about 50% actually and
this is because of different factors such as:
 Pesticides like neonicotinoids cause the bees to die or forget
memory and leave the hive.
 Parasites like (varroa destructor, paenibacillus, acarapis woodi) live
inside the hive and kills the bees easily.
 Lack of flowers because of pollution, climate change, drought,
habitat destruction and much more things that humans do.
How do WE prevent this?
 Stop using pesticides and other dangerous chemicals.
 Grow more flowers.
 Support your local bee keepers.
 Protect the environment.