Comparison of bumblebees and bees |
|
A charming detail of the landscape lives in this energetic creation, tied by invisible threads to everything that blooms, exudes aromas, sparkles and shimmers with the most delicate and brightest colors. These hardworking insects are sung in verse. Ivan Bunin wrote:
Unfortunately, beekeepers, due to a misunderstanding, dislike bumblebees. Among beekeepers, there is a very tenacious, unkind, jealous, biased suspicion of the bumblebee breed. In bumblebees, some beekeepers see dangerous pests of the bee pasture, the culprits of the deterioration of the conditions for bribe. Meanwhile, in fact, it is far from easy to establish the true nature of the relationship between bees and bumblebees: do these insects really interfere with each other, do they really compete with each other? Are they interfering? Are they competing? But why, then, in flight under natural conditions, bees and bumblebees seem to be mutually inert, as if they do not notice each other? There is no irreconcilability, hostility, even wariness between them. But this is in flight, in the air ... The difference in the behavior of bumblebees and bees
Insects even, and this does not happen so rarely, will collide in the air, flying up to the flower. So what? They collided, buzzing, scattered, recoiled in different directions, but after a moment both peacefully landed on the same flower and were busily rummaging through the corolla. Each insect is busy with its own: with straightened full-length proboscis, they methodically check the nectary after the nectary and drink the reserves of sweet food stored in it, or, digging their jaws into the anther boxes, help themselves, vigorously fluttering their membranous wings. Even at a distance of a meter and a half, a strained hum is clearly audible. But we do not see, but only guess that the work of the wings generates a certain air current, with the help of which grains of mature pollen are sucked through the apical pores of the anther capsules. Almost all of them are delayed by branched hairs that cover the body of worker bees and bumblebees almost in a solid fur coat. High-speed shooting allowed us to see what happens next with the pollen dusting the six-legged foragers. Ups and landings alternate randomly with swarming in the heart of the flower. To understand what is happening, it is enough to compare frame by frame, and the chain of movements is found in a separate sequence. It is best to observe this process on drooping willow catkins or open flowers of a poppy or apple tree.The gatherer often and quickly strokes herself on the head, rubbing her eyes with the front legs, pulls the antennae through the ring comb, cleans the proboscis, never for a moment stopping fussing in the thicket of the anthers and fingering with the middle legs. The pollen is already accumulating on the brushes of the middle legs, which are now and then combed by the comb of the hind legs, and at the same time the pollen is scraped straight from the body. Bumblebee operates according to the same stencil repertoire, but much more efficiently. He flies further, and manages to check more flowers per unit of time, and spends less time sitting on a flower. The bumblebee is generally dexterous and more agile than a bee. From time to time, both insects rise into the air for a short time. And while soaring, on the fly, they continue to wield the legs so that the rolls of sticky pollen move further and further to that, almost bare area of the tibia of the hind legs, which is surrounded by long hairs along the edges and is called the basket. The chain of movements that ultimately leads to the filling of the baskets with lumps of pegs is non-stop: while the hind legs complete one cycle, the front ones have already begun the next.
And the pollen can get lost, and the goiter can be filled with nectar by bees, bumblebees on the same flowers. The gatherers work on the fragrant pasture in an atmosphere of peaceful coexistence. Neither the stronger bumblebees dare from the flowers half and three times smaller bees, nor the incomparably more numerous bees in the zone of apiaries do not drive bumblebees from the food reserves in flowers. The stopwatch, which records the length of time the foragers have been on the flower, shows that even though the forage collector has just left the corolla, the new visitor is still going to check the stores. Until the flower has faded, and for many even for some time after some of the petals have flown around, nectaries are often like a magic well, in which the more water is drawn, the more it is drawn out ... Bees visit flowers after bumblebees, bumblebees - after bees. There is no struggle, but also no mutual assistance between foragers of winged tribes, just as there are none between bees of different breeds and families, between bumblebees of different species and nests. But is it possible to imagine anything similar to the mutual aid of foragers when visiting flowers? Quite! For example, a collector sank down on a flower, drank it, took it dry and flew away, leaving a fragrant signal in the rim, indicating something like:
Or:
Then, when a new series of pollen grains matures in the boxes of stamens, or when a supply of carbohydrate feed accumulates in the nectaries again, their aroma will interrupt the smell of the signal of the last gatherer. And the new one, flying up to the flower, will hear only its calling smell. If we translate the whole idea into the language of modern terms, then the picker leaves a repellent on the flower, and the accumulated supply of feed should become an attractant. With the haste that insects show when examining flowers, such a device would be very useful and would greatly increase the efficiency of foragers. Meanwhile, for some reason, all this is not. Within one minute, the bumblebee manages to visit 24 closed flowers of Dinaria cymbalaria, 22 flowers of Symphoricarpus racymose, 17 flowers on two Delphinium plants. That's how they hurry! And at the same time, 8 different bumblebees visited the same flower on the top of the Enothera plant in just 15 minutes. On a small plant Nemofila, each flower was visited twice in 19 minutes.13 bumblebees descended on 7 inflorescences of the Diktamnus fracsinela plant in 10 minutes, while each managed to check several flowers. And a week later, for the same time, Bumblebees managed to descend on the same inflorescences ...
It turns out that extravagance is useful here. The long-range sight is hidden in it. Flowers are not created to delight our eyes and our sense of smell. Their purpose is to lure insects. And the more insects visit each flower, the more abundant and varied the mixture of pollen falling on the stigma of the pistil, the better: this is precisely the guarantee of the prosperity of the offspring of a pollinated plant! When a bee or a bumblebee has landed on a flower with several nectaries, they continue to choose food until their tongue finds a dry nectary, from which the stock is removed anyway like: with the proboscis of an insect or with an experienced micropipette. Let in the next storages as much food as desired, the forager will not risk time, but, having left the first dry nectary, will leave the flower and fly on. It turns out that although bumblebees and bees save time in collecting food, there are no devices in their habits that prevent flaws and idle visits to flowers. One might think that foragers are primarily concerned with the benefit of pollinated flowers. Ultimately, through the prosperity of the plant species that make up the forage pasture, the nectar and pollen conveyor, the gatherers ensure the future of their offspring. However, other facts are known from the field of relationships with flowers, when strong and large bumblebees seem to even assist comparatively smaller and weaker bees. More than 300 plant species have long been recorded, in the flowers of which sweet nectar is deeply hidden at the bottom of narrow tubes or in spurs especially remote from the corolla. Insects with a relatively short proboscis, such as bees, in the usual way will never reach the flower for this nectar. It is curious that it is in such difficult cases for bees that they are rendered service by bumblebees with almost the same, and even even shorter proboscis, such as, for example, small and large earth bumblebees. These types are not accidentally called "operators". They commit a “crime” on flowers: with their highly developed, massive chitinous jaws, four-winged “burglars” easily gnaw through the walls of the tubule or corolla spurs and do it just above the nectary. Similar cuts and bites can be seen on the flowers of the wrestler - aconite, red beans, gill, gentian, red clover, heather. And each such bite is not a mistake of instinct, not an accident!
How many pages in the biological literature are written about this predatory behavior of short-haired bumblebees! For a long time, no one has doubted that bright and fragrant flowers with sweet nectar hidden in them (clear spots on the corolla petals - arrows representing nectar indicators for gatherers) lure insects, which are showered with staminate pollen when collecting nectar. Insects transfer it from flower to flower and fertilize it. That is why it is useful to increase the number of insects visiting flowers. But bumblebee operators don't do any of this. They simply plunder nectar reserves without penetrating into the core of the flower and without touching the pistil.How did this habit arise? And how could she improve? And the operators operate with amazing perfection. Although even the most ingenious bumblebee - be he, as D.I. Such a habit is not born out of a coincidence of circumstances. It's impossible! For those who disagree with this opinion, it is useful to pay attention to the cultural perennial rank - there is such a legume plant. In its flowers, nectar is hidden in a tube formed by stamens connected to each other. The insect can enter the proboscis only through one of two rounded openings near the base of the tube. Here, in most cases, the left hole is larger than the right one. And bumblebees gnaw a hole through the flag petal on the left above the nectary! Francis Darwin, who has the honor of establishing this fact, wrote:
Francis's father, Charles Darwin, drew attention to another equally remarkable phenomenon, representing the result of the action of robber bumblebees. It turns out that honey bees quickly detect bumblebee bites and immediately stop visiting flowers in a "legal order" through the mouth. They begin to pick nectar from the side, through the holes made by bumblebees in the tubes, even where only yesterday they tried to get to the nectar from above through the mouth.
It will soon be a hundred years since Darwin expressed surprise at how quickly the bees switch to sampling nectar through the bites, and, in fact, admitted that science is not yet able to satisfactorily explain this phenomenon, but there is much here and this day remains unexplained. Belgrade naturalist Sima Grozdanich is right in considering the phenomenon described here as inexpedient in the behavior of bumblebees and bees. Indeed, nectar ceases to be a bait, an attractant for pollinators. Operated flowers can only be pollinated by pollen collectors that penetrate into the corolla through the pharynx, so that the bite of a red clover tube does not affect the seed yield of this crop, while the conditions for honey collection for bees are even much easier. It turns out that the Danes - Dr. Pedersen, Stapel and others completely in vain suggested exterminating the nests of bumblebees-operators around the red clover testes (as we see, not all bumblebees in general, but only short-throated ones, and not everywhere, but only around the clover testes). Looking ahead, let us inform that in the twentieth century, on the initiative of Danish researchers - Dr. Haas, Holm and others, and to a large extent on the basis of their work at the international organization of beekeeping institutes and unions "Apimondia" a working group "Bumblebees" headed by Danish specialists was created. Its task was to study biology and protect all species of bumblebees all over the world. But that was only later, when it became clear that the bumblebee operators did not reduce the seed yield. Interaction between bees and bumblebeesAs for flowers with nectaries located more or less openly, here bumblebees and bees rather even complement each other in pollination. It is no coincidence that in many experiments openly flowering trees and berry bushes, to whose flowers all pollinators have free access, yield a higher yield than trees and bushes covered with gauze. Only honey bees from the hives standing here fly under the gauze, and other pollinators, including bumblebees, do not have access here. It is possible, however, that lower yields are also explained by the relative weakness of bee seeds working under isolators: these are usually small families, their bees are sluggish at work. It should be recalled that bumblebees are much less demanding than bees to the conditions of summer weather. Both bumblebee queens and workers fly at such low temperatures, when the foragers of the bee colonies sit in the hives. Bumblebees fly in cloudy weather when the bees do not leave their nests. Bumblebees fly out before sunrise and continue to fly after sunset, they fly even at night, they are not afraid of either the cold wind, or the drizzling rain, or even the thunderstorm or hail, when not only foragers, but also the bees-guardians of the antennae do not appear from the hives! This is not all. Bumblebees are less demanding not only to the conditions of flight weather, but also to the quality indicators of food. To make sure of this, place troughs with sugar syrup on the training tables. While the syrup contains 50, 30, even 20 percent sugar, you can see bumblebees and bees on the tables. They behave here as on flowers: they do not interfere with each other, do not pay attention to each other. But pour thinner syrup into the feeders, say, only 15 percent, and the number of bees arriving on the tables begins to decrease rapidly. Rarely does a bee continue to visit for 10% syrup, and bumblebees choose it with the same zeal. They do not stop visiting feeders with 5 and even 3 and 2 percent syrup. It is impossible to interest bees in such a lean bribe. Pure water, even slightly salted, bees collect, while nothing can force bumblebees to collect clean water. These are, it turns out, the dissimilar tastes of these insects.
Now let us give up the question of the relationship between nectar and pollen collectors on flowers and try to take a closer look at how bumblebees behave in bee hives and bees in bumblebee nests. The Siberian beekeeper Kazimir Novalinsky, who worked in the apiary for almost 30 years, studied the life of bumblebees, settling them between the glass frames of the windows of the apiary house. In the bumblebee nests that grew over time, Novalinsky put squares of bee combs with brood at the exit and then followed the fate and behavior of the foundlings in someone else's nest. Novalinsky's experiments are described in the book "Bees". Experts - not only foreign European, but also Japanese, New Zealand, Indian - appreciated the originality and simplicity of the method he used to study the relationship between bumblebees and bees. It turned out that the bees that emerged from the cells of their combs in the bumblebee nest did not disturb the owners, did not cause them any anxiety, but lived peacefully with them. They behaved, of course, in a bee-like and bee-like manner, and tried to be included in individual family events of the bumblebees. This was especially clear in the example of worker bees with damaged wings for some reason.Such bees could not fly out of the nest, and they could be observed under the roof of the bumblebee abode for 50-60 days. The adoptees, it seemed, did not in any way notice that they were in a completely unusual environment. Having matured, these bees began to run out towards the bumblebee foragers returning to the nest, reaching with their proboscis to the bumblebee mandibles, as if begging for nectar. Sometimes, as Novalinsky reported, they ensured that the bumblebees regurgitated a drop, which they usually do not do for adult bumblebees. (Bumblebees do not turn to foragers with such requests.) Perhaps the persistently outstretched proboscis of bee adoptees seemed to bumblebees like a larva waiting for handouts? The foundlings themselves have tried to feed the bumblebee larvae in bags with brood, although in bumblebees the larvae are raised not in separate, personal wax boxes, as in bees, but in a heap. And the larvae themselves, in our opinion, differ markedly from the bees. However, they are hungry, and they reach with their mouths to the hole through which food is injected, just as bee larvae protrude out of the cell towards the open mandibles of the nurse. The foundlings even tried to clean the bumblebee uterus and give her food. But these were all bees with underdeveloped or ugly wings, in short, non-flying. The rest sooner or later left the bumblebee nest. After all, when they left the taphole for the first training flight - the game - in front of the window of the bee-house, they were called from everywhere and in the end they were lured away by the rumble of bees, buzzing, and singing. About the same thing was reported later in his letters by another naturalist who studied bumblebees, D. N. Karpukhin. Experienced A. G. Nechitailo not only confirmed Novalinsky's observations, but also said that he managed to keep bumblebees and bees in one building, divided by a metal lattice into two nests, each with its own power and a tap hole. Necitailo forced the bees to raise bumblebee brood in a nest, from which they removed all bumblebees in advance, so that no one bothered the bees to show their talents as educators and nurses on the bumblebee brood. When such a nest was regularly supplied with both honey and bee bread, the bees brought the bumblebee larvae to pupation. A different fate awaits the bumblebee brood at the exit in the bee hives. Bees quickly find foreign cocoons and immediately tear them apart and throw them out of the taphole line. Experiments with replanting young bumblebees in bee hives also ended in failure. The inhabitants of the hives did not put up with the presence of settlers, although, as we already know, bumblebees are quite complacent about the presence of bees in their hives. The attitude of bees to bumblebees in hivesThis phenomenon of selective incompatibility is very curious - the attitude of bees to bumblebees in a hive, while in bumblebee nests, bees get along well. It turns out that in biology, from a change in the position of the terms, the total can change significantly! However, adult bumblebees do penetrate the hives. This is reported in a small note by Dr. Shoishi Sakagami, who works at Hokkaido University in Japan. Dr. Sakagami reported that Bombus specialosus bumblebees can descend onto hive frames while the beekeeper examines the nests. The bumblebee sticks to the cells with unsealed honey and, straightening the proboscis, begins to suck food. All the bees that are in the neighborhood immediately show anxiety, try to interrupt the banquet of the uninvited guest, but do not sting him. If the bees bother the bumblebee too much, it, with one leg continuing to hold on to the wall of the mesh, rolls over onto its back, exposes the sting, moves its free five legs in the air, as if fighting off. Sometimes he even takes off from his place, takes off, but immediately descends again onto the same honeycomb removed from the hive. Such attacks, Sakagami reported, are more frequent towards the end of the summer, in the fall, when conditions for the bribe become worse. The ratio of bees to stray bumblebees on a separate frame removed from the hive and within the nest, even in the same hive, between two frames covered with bees is not the same.Here, the result really changes from a change in the places of the terms: inside the hive, the bumblebee, as a rule, becomes the object of attack by the owners. However, not all bumblebee species are the same in this sense. In a study by the famous Russian zoopsychologist Professor Vladimir Wagner (his magnificent work on bumblebees was published at the beginning of the century in the Stuttgart zoological journal in German and, although it remains classical to this day, has not yet been translated into Russian), it is reported, among other things, that in hives, bumblebees meet fierce resistance from the owners of the nest. In the end, at the bottom of the hive, or even already under the entrance, after a while, the corpse of a bumblebee stung by bees appears. Bees even sting female cuckoo bumblebees from the genus Psitirus, although their chitinous shell is much stronger than Bombus bumblebees. The Psitirus cuckoo lays its eggs in the nests of these bumblebees, leaving the owners of the nest to raise alien larvae hatching from them. To find out how often such an intrusion of bumblebees into hives with bees is observed, I put this question to amateur beekeepers and workers of industrial apiaries. It turned out that there is no single opinion on this matter. The famous Achinsk beekeeper M.F.Shalagin wrote:
A lot of such messages were received, here is what Ivan Petrovich Gorodichenko says, for example:
The article by T. A. Atakishev presents data on the results of the survey of 170 hives with a list of all "extraneous" species found during the examinations. The examiner separately took into account the species found outside the nest (under the hive, under the taphole, on the outer wall, on the lid outside, on the arrival board, under the lid inside, above the insulation, under the insulation, between the walls and the diaphragm - this is the name of the plank partition that separates the nest frames from the empty part of the hive) and in the nest itself (on the upper slats of the frames, on the lower side of the ceiling, on the honeycombs, at the bottom of the hive). All fees were determined by specialists. And what? In no hive, the survey did not reveal a single species of bumblebee. But in 9 nests, from 1 to 4 corpses of Xylocop violacea were picked up, most often at the bottom of the hive. This large hymenoptera can perhaps be mistaken for a bumblebee. They tried to sort the answers received in every possible way: taking into account the experience of the beekeeper, by the place of residence of the respondents, by the number of hives with which the beekeeper works ... The results of the survey did not become clearer, especially since many letters were not some kind of "rustling", "black scabbards", "winged webs" and other similar mysterious animals.
And one naturalist, like Novalinsky, Karpukhin, Nechitailo, who tried to keep bumblebees in glazed hives, recalled:
However, this question seems to be losing its meaning. In recent years, in relation to science - so far only science - to bumblebees, there has been a long-awaited change. Biological studies aimed at taming, domesticating, using bumblebees for pollination of flowers are already underway in the Czech Republic, Germany, Poland, France, Denmark, Canada, the USA and Japan ... But in order to quickly and correctly solve all the questions for practice related to the organization of bumblebee breeding, it is very important to comprehensively clarify the nature of the relationship between bumblebees and bees, not only in flowers, but also in nests and hives. I. Khalifman |
Bumblebees are perhaps one of the cutest and, frankly speaking, insects dear to the human heart. Always pleasant to the eye, elegant, from head to the end of the abdomen in silky two- or even three-colored velvet. And what a hard worker! They are constantly busy, busy from morning till night. At the same time, how musical! Their songs may not have much variety, but they are definitely melodic.
Let's now take a closer look at how bumblebees and bees behave in a flower pasture. Wherever we see them - whether in the thick brush of rosehip stamens bearing anthers, on the lush head of a crimson clover, or on a sunflower basket bordered with golden tongues of petals - our insects also show nothing of their displeasure with the presence of a neighbor.
Bumblebee poll, especially on larger species of bumblebees, is two to three times more voluminous and heavier than on worker bees. Bumblebees, collecting pollen, usually do not load the crop with nectar, so that all their lifting force is spent on delivering pollen feed. Thanks to this, the foragers collected in one trip can weigh more than half the body weight of the forager itself.
Try walking on a solid heath and, say, every five steps, stop, bend over and pluck the first twig that falls into your hands until you have a full bouquet. Then go home and examine each flower carefully. Such an experiment was once undertaken by Charles Darwin and was convinced of the same thing that you will also find: many hundreds of flowers in a row, all as one, perforated, bitten from the side.
Taking into account all the above conditions, competition for food between bees and bumblebees is all the less noticeable in practice. The reserves of nectar and pollen in flowers are rarely and where they can be completely depleted with the help of insects feeding on nectar and pollen. In essence, at all latitudes, flowering plants compete, compete to attract pollinating insects. That is why there were fireworks of forms, a palette of colors, a gamut of floral aromas. The competition of flowering plants for attracting pollinating insects is especially pronounced in the Arctic regions, where bumblebees are almost the only carriers of pollen, and bees, if they are brought here, usually only for pollination under glass - in greenhouses and greenhouses.
A bumblebee with pollen on legs is not a Psitirus cuckoo, this is a Bombus.
| Wintering of birds off the Turkmen coast of the Caspian | Fish from the depths |
|---|
New recipes
