Questions tagged [bees]
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26
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When to clean out a bee house?
I have a bee house which seems to be very popular...
I have noticed that a hole can become vacant and then filled again within half a day. Now, it's been up a few years and I don't necessarily pay ...
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How do bees and wasps react to carnivorous plants?
I seem to recall that bees and wasps have alert pheromones, so that if a few of them are killed or attacked in the proximity of others, they will attract backup.
I assume it's pretty straightforward ...
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The pollination of lupins
Do lupins produce nectar? According to this study it seems like there are conflicting conclusions regarding this. And in this study the supposed inability for Lupinus argenteus to produce nectar is ...
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How can drone bees be born from unfertilized eggs?
I am learning about Drone bees and I keep reading that they are born from unfertilized eggs.
Now here is my question: if eggs are gametes and therefore reproductive cells, how can they turn into a new ...
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Is this a worker, or something else?
As far as I understand, this is a buff-tailed bumble bee (Bombus terrestris). It was collected (dying) inside my house in Santiago, Chile. The species was intentionally introduced not far away, for ...
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Is there a specific name for the feet of insects?
A friend and I were talking, and he asked me whether there was a name for insect feet (either in general or for specific insects). I think they are sometimes called tarsi, but I believe that's a more ...
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Do bees use their ovipositors for egg-laying?
I'd always assumed that, since bee stings are 'modified ovipositors', queen bees couldn't sting. But apparently they can.
What is going on with bees' ovipositors? Are they capable of injecting both ...
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Is there an evolutionary advantage to bees to becoming docile when exposed to smoke?
I have not seen other research on this on line, it occurred to me though that this physiological behavior / stimulus-response of bees (calm down when exposed to smoke) might be a subject for original ...
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Kansas Insect (Black Bee/Wasp?) Identification
I live in Kansas (Pottawatomie County), and I found a bee-like insect in my bedroom. The creature looked like this:
The insect about 5 cm long in size (as you can compare it with the window blind), ...
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Will carpenter bee larvae die if trapped or find a way to bore out?
I had a carpenter bee problem last year, beginning with the awful sounds the larvae make! The exterminators couldn’t find the bore holes (they were/are inside a gap between top of the foundation and ...
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How do honeybees requeen themselves?
It is said that beehives once queenless try to rear a new one by themselves. Beekeeping resources, books, websites, youtube videos, etc. have a very pragmatic human-centered view to the issue: what ...
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Identify a large wasp (?) from southern Poland
This insect has appeared "out of nowhere" in one of my rooms. Can you help me identify it?
Details:
location: Katowice, Upper Silesia, southern Poland, eastern Europe (46.42 N, 17.78 E),
...
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168
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Bumblebee (?) identification
These bumblebees live on my balcony, in ventilation holes in doors and windows. I'm trying to find the exact name of the species, but I can't find any that look exactly like this. Their top segment is ...
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How come the role of the Apis mellifera is determined by nutrition rather than chromosomes?
Prior to making my question I browsed on similiar question such as this one but it doesn't specifically addressed my doubt in the sense that it is related with a different species and on a concept not ...
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Waggle dance in the dark
Karl von Frisch discovered waggle dance [1] as communication system when bees talk about feed resources;
Long story short, using a polar coordinate system, bees dance to reveal flowers to sisters.
My ...
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Why don't bees sting hornets for defense?
Why don't honeybees sting hornets for defense when their hive is attacked? It seems like a good weapon against bigger animals - why not against hornets?
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How to identify the subspecies/breed of a bee
I have been a beekeeper for a number of years and originally obtained my first colonies from a guy in my neighbourhood. However, when I sell bees to someone else, they typically ask what species of ...
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Is this a carpenter bee?
This bee visits our balcony every day multiple times, but only for a brief time, making it hard to take a good picture:
Here's another picture, I finally got lucky so I'm adding it to the question:
...
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Large Alpine Hymenopteran Seen in the White Mountains
I was hiking in the White Mountains in New Hampshire, USA, and at the peak of Mount Eisenhower saw a number of large bee-like insects. They appeared to be nesting in a rock cairn, and were strikingly ...
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What was the largest flying insectoid pollinator?
Megachile pluto is a large resin bee whose body length may reach 38 mm and a wingspan of 63.5 mm. But that's nothing compared to the prehistoric and extinct Meganisoptera including the Meganeura, ...
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Why do bees fly inside the gaps between the decoration on the exterior wall of a building and the wall?
My house has decorations around the windows on the exterior wall:
There are gaps between those decorations and the bricks of the building:
During the summer, there are always bees looking for those ...
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What is the minimum atmospheric pressure at which bees can live/thrive?
Bees are amazing little critters. (Gosh, they're cute.) But what if we colonize Mars and start terraforming it? At what point will bees (and other insects) be able to live/thrive in that environment?
...
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What kind of bee can dig through stone?
My house (in Israel) has a concrete structure, with a decorative veneer of Jerusalem Stone at least an inch thick. Yesterday I came out to discover a little hole in the wall - and a pair of bees ...
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How do bees help flowering trees survive?
I have often heard a vague claim that bees help flowering tree populations survive.
As far as I know, bees take nectar and pollen concentrations from the flowers of flowering trees and use at least ...
user22497
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Why are bees "committing suicide" in my house?
There is a beehive about 500-1000 meters away from my house.
During the last years, almost every day, one or more bees enter from the window, "dance" for an hour or two, and then drop dead on the ...
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Which species of bee or wasp are in this photo?
Please tell me what do you think :)
The photo is from Santander, Colombia. I didn’t take any closeups photos 😞, but these were little bees, like 5 x 1 mm. The tube didn’t seem man-made, it was ...
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