Category Insects

How the bee-eater makes its strange nest?

The nests of bee-eaters are strange constructions, like those of the fishing martin. The bee-eater used its long beak to dig out deep tunnels on the steep banks of rivers.

The tunnels open on to a room under the ground, which is the bird’s nest. The floor of the nest is covered in butterflies wings and the remains of insects.

These remains do not make a very comfortable bed but the young bee-eaters seem to like it.

The bee-eater is a tireless flier. From morning until night it goes in search of insects. While other birds help farmers by eating up grubs that live on plants, the bee-eater prefers to catch its victims as they fly along.

The only damage this bird does in hunting is to kill many bees and this angers bee-keepers.

The bee-eater with its brilliant plumage and pointed wings is related to the kingfisher. It is found in Europe and Australia.

 

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Do you know how bees produce wax and honey?

The wax produced by bees is used in making honeycombs consisting of six-sided cells into each of which the queen bee lays an egg that will eventually give birth to an insect. Other cells in the honeycomb act as storage places for honey.

Bees produce wax in very thin sheets from eight glands on their abdomens. It takes some 1,250 of these sheets to make up one gramme of wax. We can imagine the amount of hard work that goes into the construction of a honeycomb. Not only does the bee produce the wax, but it also shapes it into the hexagonal cell.

The honey is nectar from flowers which has been gathered concentrated and digested by the bees. The honey still has the scent of the flowers where the bees first found it. The queen bee is an extremely fertile animal. This insect is no more than 2 centimeters long but lays an average of 2,500 eggs a day at the rate of two eggs every minute. It does this throughout its entire life, accumulating a total of 2 million eggs.

Each egg is placed inside a hexagonal cell. If the larvae as the infant bees are called are fed on a substance known as royal jelly, they too, become queens. If they are just fed on pollen they grow into ordinary bees. But a beehive can contain only one queen. So the first queen bee to emerge from the cells and drives the old queen out. The old queen leaves with a swarm of bees still loyal to her to start another hive elsewhere.

Once the new queen begins her reign she carries out what is called her nuptial flight. As she flies through the air she is accompanied by male bees known as drones. The queen bee flies higher and higher and only the strongest of the drones can catch her and mate with her, the queen bee return from her nuptial flight fertilized and sets to laying eggs assisted by a group of bees who feed her and look after all her needs.

 

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Which spiders do Victorians mistake for a Sydney funnel-web?

Victorian funnel-web, trap-door spiders and mouse spiders do Victorians mistake for a Sydney funnel-web. The Melbourne trap-door spider, stanwellia grisea, looks similar to the Sydney funnel-web. It is found throughout the Melbourne metropolitan area. The Melbourne trap-door spider is quite aggressive, but rarely bites. If you are unlucky enough to be bitten, it can be painful but not dangerous. Mouse spiders, missulena bradleyi, are found on the outskirts of Melbourne, on the Mornington Peninsula and in the drier western areas of Victoria. They can also be aggressive but rarely bite. The bite is not known to be dangerous. Victorian funnel-web, mouse and trap-door spiders all live in burrows in the ground.

Funnel-webs burrow in sheltered sites under logs and rocks where they can find a cool and humid climate. Funnel-webs rush out of their burrow when potential prey, such as beetles, cockroaches, small lizards or snails, walk across silken trip-lines that the spider has placed around the outside of its burrow. They then return to their burrow to eat their meal.

 

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Is it true that all female spiders eat the males after mating?

No, this is not true. Some female spiders do not eat their mates, however some species will eat the male, if they are smaller or food is scarce.

“We were surprised to find that such a simple characteristic such as how small males are relative to females has such a large effect on the frequency of sexual cannibalism,” Wilder said.

Perhaps the most well-known example of spider-women eating spider-men is the black widow. But even that cannibalism case is overstated. For most of the many species of black widows, cannibalism is the exception, not the rule, according to Rod Crawford of the Burke Museum of Natural History & Culture at the University of Washington.

 

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Are daddy long-legs the most poisonous spiders in the world?

It turns out that the notion is false on both counts. But a little clarification is needed.

According to entomologists at the University of California, Riverside, the term “daddy longlegs” is commonly used to refer to two distinct types of creatures: opilionids arachnids with pill-shape bodies and eight long legs that are actually not spiders, and pholcids, which have long legs and small bodies, and thus resemble opilionids, but which are true spiders.

Pholcids, or daddy long-legs spiders, are venomous predators, and although they never naturally bite people, their fangs are similar in structure to those of brown recluse spiders, and therefore can theoretically penetrate skin. For these reasons, “This is most probably the animal to which people refer when they tell the tale,” the entomologists assert.

But is pholcids’ venom extremely poisonous? Surprisingly, because they almost never bite, scientists have never bothered to conduct research to determine their venom’s toxicity to humans . In 2004, the Discovery Channel show “Mythbusters” stepped in to fill this knowledge void. The team set out to coax a daddy longlegs spider into biting the arm of the show’s co-host, Adam Savage.

 

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Is the deadly Sydney funnel-web spider found in Victoria?

Sydney funnelweb spiders are not found in Victoria.

The two Victorian funnelweb spider species are relatives of the Sydney funnelweb spider. 

Funnelweb spiders are found around the east coast and the highlands of Australia (from Queensland to Tasmania) and small regions of South Australia. Most are found on the ground where they build burrows in moist, cool, sheltered areas, but some are tree-dwelling. They are regarded to be the most notorious of the Australian spiders due to their highly toxic and fast-acting venom. However, out of at least 40 species, only the male Sydney funnelweb spiders have been responsible for recorded deaths

Funnelweb spiders have a shiny black head and legs, and black to brown abdomen covered in fine hairs. The females are slightly larger (35 mm) than the males (30 mm).

The female produces a pillow-shaped silk egg sac, which she defends vigorously if disturbed. The spiderlings hatch about 3 weeks later, and stay with the mother for a few months. Funnelwebs reach maturity in about 2–4 years. The females live for 10 or more years, whereas the males die 6–9 months after maturity.

 

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