Questions and Answers
1. What are bumblebees?
Answer: Bumblebees are an insect. They have six legs just like an insect.
2. What is so special about a bumblebees hair?
Answer: Bumblebees have hair that acts as an insulation so that they can pollinate flowers when it is too cold for honey bees. Their hair is also warningly colored, which makes predators think that they are dangerous.
3. Can you list the three body parts on a bumblebee that have
an unspecialized purpose?
Answer: The coxa, femur, and trochanter are the body parts on a bumblebee that have an unspecialized purpose.
4. How many times can a bumblebee beat their wings per
second?
Answer: Bumblebees can beat their wings 130-240 times per second. That is what makes them so loud when they buzz by you. Their wings take up the whole thorax.
5. What do the queens eat to give them protein for egg
formation?
Answer: The queens eat pollen to give them protein for egg formation. If they don%u2019t eat pollen then it is harder to form a colony because then the queen wouldn%u2019t be able to produce eggs.
6. Why do some bumblebees form a wax canopy over their
nest?
Answer: Bumblebees form a wax canopy over their nest so that they can protect themselves from predators and to keep them warm.
7. How would you compare a honeybee too a bumblebee?
Answer: Honey Bees have a more extensive nest than a bumblebee and bumblebees do not make as much honey as honeybees.
8. How would you summarize a bumblebees%u2019 protection?
Answer: Bumblebees have a venomous stinger that can sting more then once. They also generally nest in places that are hard to reach.
9. Explain what it is meant by %u201C shivering their flight muscles %u201C.
Answer: Bumblebees shiver their flight muscles to warm them. That helps them pollinate flowers when it is too cold for the honeybees.
10.Why have some bumblebee species disappeared in
England?
Answer: Some bumblebee species have disappeared in
11. How could you help bumblebees form disappearing?
Answer: You help bumblebees by disappearing by not
spraying pesticides on blooming flowers, not disturbing their
nests, not clearing land, and not having agricultural
practices.
12. Can you list the three visual cells in the bumblebees%u2019
compound eyes.
Answer: Bumblebees can see the colors green sensitive,
blue sensitive, and ultra violet sensitive.
13. Can you predict the outcome if there wasn%u2019t a queen bee?
Answer: What would happen if there wasn%u2019t a queen bee is
that there wouldn%u2019t be anymore bumblebees left. The queen
is the one that creates the colony.
14. What would you recommend to exterminators?
I would recommend not to spray pesticides with nicotiniods
in them on plants. Humans that are armed with pesticides
the most harmful enemy to bumblebees.
15. Would it be better if exterminators didn%u2019t spray pesticides?
Answer: Yes, it would be a million times better because as
you know pesticides kill bumblebee and if there aren%u2019t any
more bumblebees then there would be a shortage of plants
in the world.
16. What conclusions can you draw to how bumblebees nectar
rob?
Answer: The worker sit on the top of the petal and using
her weight and her leg to hold her up. Then she is inside the
flower. Then she has to crawl further down to reach the nectar.
Experiment:
Testable Question: Can I train bees and wasps to learn shapes?
Materials: On an outdoor table, on a sunny day, lay out a large piece of paper 8 ½ by 11. Then, get a black marker and 4 small cups. Make sure to get water and sugar.
Procedure: First, draw 4 shapes on the white sheet of paper with the black marker. The shapes could be a triangle, a circle, a square, and X and so on. You may want to cover the white sheet of paper with plastic or laminate it to protect it from the rain or dew. Place the small cups on each shape except the last one and fill them with water and 25% sugar. On the last cup, you can fill it up with flowers, corn syrup, or a different kind of sugar but, you cannot fill it up with the same sugar and water like the other cups. Do this for 5 days.
See the data chart on the next page!
Hypothesis: For example, if the sugar water is at the triangle, most of the bees and wasps will be coming to the triangle for 5 days, even if there is no sugar water at the triangle.
Conclusion: Our hypothesis was supported. The honey bees and the wasps did come. The sugar water was by the triangle. After 5 days, I moved it to the square. The bees continued to come to the triangle. I proved my hypothesis.
New Questions: Are bees attracted to different colors? Do bees prefer honey to sugar? Does CCD have anything to do with the type of sugar beekeepers feed them? Will different pesticides kill the honey bees?
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- March 2008 [1]
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- January 2008 [7]
