Transcript Flower Visitor Presentation [PPTX 11.47MB]

By Scott Dwyer and Dr Karin Alton
November 2013
LASI Outreach
Flower Visitors
Honey bees
A honey bee (Apis Melifera) belongs to the order
Hymenoptera, which is the order all social insects in the
UK belong too.
They produce honey and pollinate flowers and they are
worth around £1bn in relation to the food they pollinate.
Honey bees are kept by beekeepers, and they live in
colonies which have a Queen, Workers and Drones.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/autumnwatch/features/honeybees.shtml
Honey bee Castes
Worker
Drone
Queen
Numbers in a hive:
Workers: 20 to 60,000
Queen: 1
Drones: 100 – 300 drones in
the summer
Image: Zach Huang
Honey bee life cycle
hello
Worker
Queen
Drone
Egg
3
3
3
Larva
6
5
7
Larva/pr
o-pupa
3
2
4
Pupa
9
6
10
Total
21
16
24
Open cell
Sealed
cell
Image: Climate Kids, NASA
Development times
Duties of the worker bee
 Worker bee housekeeping (the worker bee is 1 to 3 days old)
 Removal of dead workers from the hive (days 3 to 16)
 Nursing young worker bees (days 4 to 12)
 Attending to the queen bee (days 7 to 12)
 Collecting nectar, pollen and water for the hive from returning
foragers (days 12 to 18)
 Fanning the beehive (days 12 to 18)
 Making wax comb (days 12 to 35)
 Guarding the hive (days 18 to 21)
 Becoming foragers (days 22 to 42) - Death
Waggle dance
Honey bees tell their nest mates where to find a good source of food.
This is known as the Waggle Dance. Karl von Frisch spent his entire life
studying bees and won a Nobel Prize in 1973 for his research on that
subject.
Two videos to watch
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p007vgtw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4D6WGmXTLQ
Photo: Christoph Gruter
Why are bees important to us?
Food
Bees and other insects pollinate a lot of the
food we consume. This includes a large
amount of the food we eat daily at
breakfast such as jams, marmalade, fresh
fruits, coffee and so on. They also pollinate
many of our vegetables, for instance
onions, cauliflower and broccoli, so that we
can sow the seeds for next years crop.
Bumblebees
Bumblebees are larger and more rotund and colorful
than honey bees, and will not sting unless severely
agitated. There are around 25 species in the UK.
They have a deep buzz and are a familiar sight in
summer in both cities and the countryside.
In spring, a bumblebee colony is founded by a queen,
that has overwintered, she lays eggs that become
workers. Firstly, she lays a lot of workers before she
eventually lays males and young queens, who leave
the nest and mate.
The life cycle of the bumblebee
Common bumblebee species (UK)
Bombus terrestris
Bombus lapidarius
Bombus pascuorum
Bombus monticola
Bombus hypnorum
Bombus pratorum
Cuckoo bumblebees
Cuckoo bumblebees are members are the subgenus
Psithyrus, they look very much like true bumblebees
and still belong to the same genus Bombus.
Unlike bumblebees there are no worker castes, or
queens, just males or females. The cuckoo bees enter a
bumblebee nest and kills the bumblebee queen and
she lays her eggs and then the cuckoo larvae are raised
in the nest of the true bumblebee species.
Example of cuckoo
bumblebees
 The bumblebee Bombus
vestalis (top left) is a
cuckoo which has very
similar colourings to its
host bumblebee Bombus
terrestris (bottom left).
Solitary Bees
There are around 200 species in the
UK, unlike honey bees and
bumblebees they do not live in
colonies.
The first solitary bees appear in March,
and these are miner bees (Andrena).
They look similar to honeybees, yet
lack pollen baskets. They make their
nests in the ground, in sandy soil and
along paths. The female digs the nest
and stocks it with nectar and pollen
and seals it and then leaves the young
to fend for themselves.
Image: wildaboutbritain
Butterflies
 A butterfly is a mainly day-flying insect, they belong to
the order Lepidoptera, which also includes moths.
 Their lifecycle consists of four parts; egg, larva, crystalis
(pupa), adult.
 Butterflies can vary, such as polymorphism (where
there is more than one colour of the same species),
sexual dimorphism and seasonal morphism and
geographical morphism.
Butterfly Anatomy
 The butterfly
pollinates flowers by
pollen being
transferred onto its
legs and body.
 The butterfly has a
long proboscis which
it uses to collect
nectar.
Image: www.theanimalfiles.com
Butterfly species (UK)
Red admiral
Vanessa atalanta
Meadow Brown
Maniola jurtina
Heath Fritillary
Melitaea athalia
Large Blue
Glaucopsyche arion
Holly Blue
Celastrina argiolus
Wood White
Leptidea sinapis
Conservation of Large Blue
• The Large Blue butterfly went
extinct in the UK and was
reintroduced from a Swedish
population. The butterfly is a
parasitic on the grubs of the red
ant, Myrmica sabuleti.
• Management of grassland sites to
keep sward height at optimum
levels for the red ant, Myrmica
sabuleti has enabled the
successful re- introduction of a
previously extinct species in the
UK
Image: Richard Lewington
Hoverflies
There are more than 250 species of hoverfly. They are a
type of fly and belong to the order Diptera. They are
skillful flyers and can reach bursts of speed of up to
40km/h .
Many hoverflies mimic wasps in colouration, this is
called a Batesian mimicry, where a harmless species
mimics a dangerous one, to gain protection from
predation of visual searching natural enemies. There
are also hoverflies that mimic bumblebees and the
honey bee.
Photo: Alex Wild
Life cycle of a hoverfly
Image:http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/artmay07/cd-hoverflies.html
Example of mimicry
Here is one example of a wasp mimic hoverfly, on the left is the Common Wasp,
( Paravespula vulgris ) and on the right is the Hover Fly (Chrysotoxum cautum - female)
http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/artmay07/cd-hoverflies.html
Other flies
• Flies are very common. These are not social
insects. There are more than 120,000 species
of flies worldwide. Most flies live an average
of 21 days and take on various shapes
throughout their short lives. The larvae of
the flies are sometimes called maggots.
There are many types of flies that visit
flowers for food such as this green bottle fly
(top) and the noon fly (right). Some live on a
varied diet of dead animal flesh, animal
faeces as well as feeding on nectar and
pollen.
Beetles
Some beetles also visit flowers for food. Beetles belong
to the order Coleoptera, which includes weevils and
ladybirds. Many beetles are omnivores and eat both
plants and animals. There are over 400,000 species
worldwide. This is a group of pollen beetles (left) and
this is a soldier beetle (right).
Summary
 Flower visitors include:
 Honey bees
 Bumblebees
 Solitary bees
 Butterflies
 Hoverflies
 Other flies
 Beetles
Honey bee drinking nectar. Photo: John Kimbler