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1. The History of
BeeKeeping
2. Anatomy of a Bee
3. The Brood Rearing Process
4. Queen, Worker & Drones Behavior
5. Races of Bees
6. Nectar and Pollen Plants of Pacific Northwest
7. Beekeeping Equipment & Hive Assembly
8. Selecting the apiary site
9. Packaged Bees and how to care for them
10. How to Manage Bees
11. Swarming, causes and control
12. How to hive a swarm
13. Removing and Extracting the Honey Crop
14. Wintering the Hive
15. Colony treatment for bee disease & mite control
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LESSON 2:
Anatomy of a Bee
Below is a description of the unique parts of a bee.
Pollen Basket - The pollen is scraped out of the pollen comb by means of the pectin, on opposite hind legs. From the pectin it is placed or scraped into the pollen basket. (Pollen basket is a cavity surrounded by hairs.)
- Feelers - The organs of smell and touch.
- Tongue (Proboscis) - The organ of taste, two parts, one tongue proper to suck smaller particles at the bottom of a flower and a combination of the mouth parts folded up for coarser parts of that can be drawn into the food sac.
- Eye - Can distinguish the hue of various flowers.
- Abdomen - Contains the wax glands and the stinger. The wax glands are where wax scales are secreted by eight wax plates under the abdomen of worker bees. It is liquid when first secreted, then dries into small flakes. The bees can only produce wax for a certain amount of time until the wax plates turn into a flat layer of cells. The stinger consist of three slender closely connected pieces forming the sharp piercing organ that projects from the tip of the abdomen.
- Stomach - Bees have two stomachs. The honey stomach holds nectar or honey. The stomach mouth is where nectar goes first and the pollen is strained out before it goes into the honey stomach.
- Wings - The two wings of the bee on each side are united to each other by a series of very small hooks so that they work together, and thus four wings are converted into two.
- Salivary Glands - Located in the back part of the head and front of the thorax. The saliva can thus affect the liquid food before the latter enters the mouth, or it can be allowed to run down the tongue upon hard sugar in or to dissolve it.
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