glosary
Apis Mellifera
The Western honeybee (Apis mellifera) is a species of honeybee comprised of several subspecies or races. Apis mellifera was first classified by Carolus Linnaeus in 1758.
Bees:
Bees (Apoidea superfamily) are flying insects, closely related to wasps and ants. They are adapted for feeding on nectar, and play an important role in pollinating flowering plants, and are called pollinators. Bees have a long proboscis that enables them to obtain the nectar from flowers. Bees have antennae made up of thirteen segments in males and twelve in females. They have two pairs of wings, the back pair being the smaller of the two. There are over 16,000 described species, and possibly around 30,000 species in total. Bees may be solitary, or may live in various sorts of communities. The most advanced of these are eusocial colonies, found among the honeybees and stingless bees. Sociality is believed to have evolved separately in different groups of bees.
Beekeepers:
Beekeeping (or apiculture, from Latin apis, a bee) is the practice of intentional maintenance of honeybee hives by humans. A beekeeper may keep bees in order to collect honey and beeswax, or for the purpose of pollinating crops, or to produce bees for sale to other beekeepers. A location where bees are kept is called an apiary.
Bumble Bees:
The bumblebee is a flying insect of the genus Bombus in the family Apidae. Like the common honeybee, of which it is a relative, the bumblebee feeds on nectar and gathers pollen to feed its young. These creatures are beneficial to humans and the plant world alike, and tend to be larger than other members of the bee family. Most, but not all, bumblebee species are gentle. From this comes their original name: "Humblebee".
Bumblebees are social insects that are characterized by a black and yellow striped body, a commonality among the majority of the species of Bombus; however, some species are known to have orange or even red on their bodies. Another distinguishing characteristic is a hairlike substance, called pile, that covers their entire body, making them appear and feel fuzzy. Queen and worker bumblebees can sting. Their sting is not barbed like that of the honeybee, so they can sting more than once.
Colony:
In biology, a colony (from Latin colonia) refers to several individual organisms of the same species living closely together, usually for mutual benefit, such as stronger defences, the ability to attack bigger prey, etc. Some insects (ants and honey bees, for example) live only in colonies.
Comb Honey:
Comb honey is produced by honeybees in a hive. The bees fill the hexagon shaped wax cells of the honeycomb with honey and cap it with beeswax. Before the invention of honey extractor almost all honey produced was in the form of comb honey. Now, only very little honey is produced as comb honey. Comb honey production requires good bee keeping skills. It cannot be easily mechanized and is therefore quite labor intensive. Comb honey production is more suitable for areas with a prolonged honeyflow from dutch clover, alsike, and yellow clover. Areas that are wooded are not very suitable for comb honey production as bees tend to collect much propolis which makes the harvesting of comb honey much more difficult.
Drone Bee:
Drones are male honeybees. Male honeybees develop when the queen bee lays unfertilized eggs
European Honey Bees:
Apis mellifera ligustica , classified by Spinola, 1806 - the Italian bee. The most commonly kept race in North America, South America and southern Europe. They are kept commercially all over the world. They are very gentle, not terribly inclined to swarm, and produce a large surplus of honey. They have few negative characteristics. Colonies tend to maintain larger populations through winter, so they require more winter stores (or feeding) than other temperate zone races. Italians are light colored, most leather colored, but some strains are golden.
Harvest of Honey:
Before the invention of honey extractor almost all honey produced was in the form of comb honey. Now, only very little honey is produced as comb honey. Comb honey production requires good bee keeping skills. It cannot be easily mechanized and is therefore quite labor intensive. Comb honey production is more suitable for areas with a prolonged honeyflow from dutch clover, alsike, and yellow clover. Areas that are wooded are not very suitable for comb honey production as bees tend to collect much propolis which makes the harvesting of comb honey much more difficult.
Hives:
Domesticated honeybees are kept in beehives. The bees use the hive space to raise brood and to store honey for the coming winter. A location where beehives are kept is known as an apiary.
Honey:
Honey is a sweet and viscous fluid produced by bees and other insects from the nectar of flowers. "The definition of honey stipulates a pure product that does not allow for the addition of any other substance. This includes, but is not limited to, water or other sweeteners," according to the United States National Honey Board 2003 and other nations' food regulations. Honey is significantly sweeter than table sugar and has attractive chemical properties for baking. Honey has a distinctive flavor which leads some people to prefer it over sugar and other sweeteners.
Honey Bees:
Honeybees are a subset of bees which fall into the Order Hymenoptera and Suborder Apocrita. Of the approximately 20,000 known species of bees, there are eleven species within the genus Apis, all of which produce and store honey to some degree. Four species have historically been cultured for or robbed of honey by humans: Apis mellifera (Western honeybee), Apis florea (Dwarf honeybee/little bee), Apis cerana and Apis dorsata. They have been domesticated at least since the time of the building of the Egyptian pyramids.
Larvae(larva)
A larva (Latin; plural larvae) is a juvenile form of animal with indirect development, undergoing metamorphosis (for example, insects or amphibians).
The larva can look completely different from the adult form, for example, a caterpillar differs from a butterfly. Larvae often have special (larval) organs which do not occur in the adult form. The larvae of some species can become pubescent and not further develop into the adult form (for example, in some newts). This is called neoteny.
It is a misunderstanding that the larval form always reflects the groups evolutionary history. It could be the case, but often the larval stage has evolved secondarily, like in insects. In these cases the larval form might differ more from the group's common origin than the adult form. The primary larval form it does not necessarily show how an animal's ancestors looked like, since this stage often has evolved in its own direction just as the adult form has.
Nectar:
Nectar source — in botany, the sugar-rich liquid produced by the flowers of plants in order to attract pollinating animals. It is also the principal raw ingredient of honey. The nectary is the gland that secretes nectar. It is usually located at the base of the flower, forcing pollinators to brush against the flower's reproductive structures to reach it. It is not a modified stamen. Nectar that is produced outside the flower is generally produced to attract predatory insects. They will eat both the nectar and any plant-eating insects around, thus functioning as 'bodyguards'. Some carnivorous plants will use nectar to lure prey insects into the trap organs of the plant.
Pollen:
Pollen is a fine to coarse powder consisting of microgametophytes (pollen grains), which carry the male gametes of seed plants. Each pollen grain contains one or two generative cells (the male gametes) and a vegetative cell. The group of three cells is surrounded by a cellulose cell wall and a thick, tough outer wall made of sporopollenin. The transfer of pollen grains to the female reproductive structure (pistil in angiosperms) is called pollination.
Pollination:
Pollination is an important step in the reproduction of seed plants: the transfer of pollen grains (male gametes) to the plant carpel, the structure that contains the ovule (female gamete). The receptive part of the carpel is called a stigma in the flowers of angiosperms and a micropyle in gymnosperms. The study of pollination brings together many disciplines, such as botany, horticulture, entomology, and ecology. Pollination is important in horticulture because most plant fruits will not develop if the ovules are not fertilized.
Queen Bees:
Honeybee queens are developed from larvae selected by worker bees to become sexually mature. In each hive or colony, there is normally only one adult, mated queen, who is the mother of the bees of the hive, although there are exceptions. The queen develops more fully than sexually immature workers because she is given royal jelly, a secretion from glands on the heads of young workers, for an extended time. She develops a specially constructed cell, which is larger than the cells of normal brood comb, and is oriented vertically instead of horizontally.
Royal Jelly:
Royal jelly is a type of bee secretion that aids in the development of immature or young bees. It is secreted by the heads of young workers and used (amongst other substances) to feed the young until they develop to the desired rank. If a queen is desired, the hatchling will receive only royal jelly as its food source, in order that she will become sexually mature and have the fully developed ovaries needed to lay more eggs for the hive.
People collect royal jelly for a dietary supplement. It contains all of the B-complex vitamins, including a high concentration of pantothenic acid (vitamin B5) and vitamin B6 (pyridoxine), and is the only natural source of pure acetylcholine. Royal jelly also contains minerals, enzymes, hormones, eighteen amino acids, antibacterial and antibiotic components, and vitamins A, C, D and E.
Sting:
A bee sting in the vernacular means a sting of a bee, wasp or hornet. Some people may even call the bite of a horsefly a bee sting. It is important to differentiate a bee sting from an insect bite. It is also important to recognize that the venom or toxin of stinging insects is quite different. Therefore, the body's reaction to a bee sting may differ significantly from one species to another.
The most aggressive stinging insects are wasps and hornets.
Wasp:
A wasp is any insect of the order Hymenoptera and suborder Apocrita that is not a bee, sawfly, or an ant. Less familiar, the suborder Symphyta includes the sawflies and wood wasps, which differ from the Apocrita by having a broad connection between the thorax and abdomen. Also, Symphyta larvae are mostly herbivorous and "caterpillarlike", whereas those of Apocrita are largely predatory or parasitic.
Most familiar wasps belong to the Aculeata, a division of the Apocrita, whose ovipositors are modified into a venomous stinger. Aculeata also contains ants and bees. In this sense, the species called "velvet ants" (Mutillidae) are actually wasps.
A narrower meaning of the term wasp is any member of the Aculeate family Vespidae. This includes the yellowjackets (Vespula, Dolichovespula spp.) and hornets (Vespa spp.).
Wax:
Beeswax is a product from a bee hive. Beeswax is secreted by honeybees of a certain age in the form of thin scales. The scales are produced by glands of 12 to 17 days old worker bees on the ventral (stomach) surface of the abdomen. Worker bees have eight wax-producing glands on the inner sides of the sternites (the ventral shield or plate of each segment of the body). Wax is produced from abdominal segments 4 to 7. The size of these wax glands depends on the age of the worker.
Worker Bees:
A worker bee is a female honeybee which performs certain tasks in support of a bee hive. Worker bees undergo a well defined progression of capabilities. In the summer 98% of the bees in a hive are worker bees. In the winter, besides the queen, all bees are worker bees.
When a colony absconds (all bees leave the colony) or divides and so creates a swarm and then establishes a new colony, the bees must regress in their behavior in order to establish the first generation in the new home. The most urgent task will be the creation of new beeswax for comb. Beekeepers take advantage of this by introducing swarms into new or existing colonies where they will draw comb. Comb is much more difficult to come by than honey and requires about six times the energy to create. A newly hived swarm on bar bars (top bar hive) or empty foundation (Langsthroth box hive) will often be fed sugar water, which they can then rapidly consume to create wax for new comb (Mature hives cannot be so fed as they will store it in place of nectar, although a wintering hive may have to be fed if insufficient honey was left by the beekeeper.)
(Fuente:Wikipedia)