ADULT MOSQUITOES

ADULT

           

             The period of development from egg to adult varies among species and is strongly influenced by ambient temperature. Some species of mosquitoes can develop from egg to adult in as few as five days, but a more typical period of development in tropical conditions would be some 40 days or more for most species. The variation of the body size in adult mosquitoes depends on the density of the larval population and food supply within the breeding water.

             Adult mosquitoes usually mate within a few days after emerging from the pupal stage. In most species, the males form large swarms, usually around dusk, and the females fly into the swarms to mate.

             Males typically live for about 5–7 days, feeding on necter and other sources of sugar. After obtaining a full blood meal, the female will rest for a few days while the blood is digested and eggs are developed. This process depends on the temperature, but usually takes two to three days in tropical conditions. Once the eggs are fully developed, the female lays them and resumes host-seeking.

             The cycle repeats itself until the female dies. While females can live longer than a month in captivity, most do not live longer than one to two weeks in nature. Their lifespans depend on temperature, humidity, and their ability to successfully obtain a blood meal while avoiding host defenses and predators.

           

             The length of the adult is typically between 3 mm and 6 mm. The smallest known mosquitoes are around 2 mm (0.1 in), and the largest around 19 mm (0.7 in). Mosquitoes typically weigh around 5 mg. All mosquitoes have slender bodies with three segments: a head, a thorax and an abdomen.

             The head is specialized for receiving sensory information and for feeding. It has eyes and a pair of long, many-segmented antennae. The antennae are important for detecting host odors, as well as odors of breeding sites where females lay eggs. In all mosquito species, the antennae of the males in comparison to the females are noticeably bushier and contain auditory receptors to detect the characteristic whine of the females.

             The compound eyes are distinctly separated from one another. Their larvae only possess a pit-eye ocellus. The compound eyes of adults develop in a separate region of the head. New ommatidia are added in semicircular rows at the rear of the eye. During the first phase of growth, this leads to individual ommatidia being square, but later in development they become hexagonal. The hexagonal pattern will only become visible when the carapace of the stage with square eyes is molted.

             The head also has an elongated, forward-projecting, stinger-like proboscis used for feeding, and two sensory palps. The maxillary palps of the males are longer than their proboscises, whereas the females’ maxillary palps are much shorter. In typical bloodsucking species, the female has an elongated proboscis.

             The thorax is specialized for locomotion. Three pairs of legs and a pair of wings are attached to the thorax. The insect wing is an outgrowth of the exoskeleton. The Anopheles mosquito can fly for up to four hours continuously at 1 to 2 km/h (0.6–1 mph), traveling up to 12 km (7.5 mi) in a night. Males beat their wings between 450 and 600 times per second.

             The abdomen is specialized for food digestion and egg development; the abdomen of a mosquito can hold three times its own weight in blood. This segment expands considerably when a female takes a blood meal. The blood is digested over time, serving as a source of protein for the production of eggs, which gradually fill the abdomen.

PUPA OF MOSQUITOES

PUPA

          It is interesting to know that pupa of mosquitoes is the step of it's lifecycle. As seen in it's lateral aspect, the mosquito pupa is comma shaped. The head and thorax are merged into cephalothorax, with abdomen curving around underneath. The pupa is commonly called Tumbler due to it's swimming action, it can actively swim by flipping its abdomen. As with the larva the pupa of most species must come to the surface frequently to breathe, which they do through a pair of cephalothoraxes. However, pupae do not feed during this stage; typically they pass their time hanging from the surface of the water by their respiratory trumpets. If alarmed, say by a passing shadow, they nimbly swim downwards by flipping their abdomens in much the same way as the larvae do. If undistributed, they soon float up again.
           After few days or longer, depending on the temperature and other circumstances, the dorsal surface of it's cephalothorax splits, and the adult mosquito emerges. The pupa is less active than the larva because it does not feed, whereas the larva feeds constantly.  

LARVA OF MOSQUITOES

Larva

The mosquito larva has a well-developed head with mouth brushes used for feeding, a large thorax with no legs, and a segmented abdomen.

Larvae breathe through spiracles located on their eighth abdominal segments, or through a siphon, so must come to the surface frequently. The larvae spend most of their time feeding on algae, bacteria, and other microbes in the surface microlayer.

Mosquito larvae have been investigated as prey of other Dipteran flies. Species such as Bezzia nobilis within the family Ceratopogonidae have been observed in experiments to prey upon mosquito larvae.

They dive below the surface when disturbed. Larvae swim either through propulsion with their mouth brushes, or by jerky movements of their entire bodies, giving them the common name of "wigglers" or "wrigglers".

Larvae develop through four stages, or instars, after which they metamorphos into pupae. At the end of each instar, the larvae molt, shedding their skins to allow for further growth.

EGGS AND OVIPOSITION IN MOSQUITOES

Eggs and Oviposition

           Mosquito habits of oviposition, the ways in which they lay their eggs, vary considerably between species, and the morphologies of the eggs vary accordingly. The simplest procedure is that followed by many species of Anopheles; like many other gracile species of aquatic insects, females just fly over the water, bobbing up and down to the water surface and dropping eggs more or less singly. The bobbing behavior occurs among some other aquatic insects as well, for example mayflies and dragonoflies; it is sometimes called "dapping". The eggs of Anopheles species are roughly cigar-shaped and have floats down their sides. Females of many common species can lay 100–200 eggs during the course of the adult phase of their life cycles. Even with high egg and intergenerational mortality, over a period of several weeks, a single successful breeding pair can create a population of thousands.

        Some other species, for example members of the genus Mansonia, lay their eggs in arrays, attached usually to the under-surfaces of waterlily pads. Their close relatives, the genus Coquillettidia, lay their eggs similarly, but not attached to plants. Instead, the eggs form layers called "rafts" that float on the water. This is a common mode of oviposition, and most species of Culex are known for the habit, which also occurs in some other genera, such as Culiseta and Uranotaenia. Anopheles eggs may on occasion cluster together on the water, too, but the clusters do not generally look much like compactly glued rafts of eggs.

           In species that lay their eggs in rafts, rafts do not form adventitiously; the female Culex settles carefully on still water with its hind legs crossed, and as it lays the eggs one by one, it twitches to arrange them into a head-down array that sticks together to form the raft.

           Aedes females generally drop their eggs singly, much as Anopheles do, but not as a rule into water. Instead, they lay their eggs on damp mud or other surfaces near the water's edge. Such an oviposition site commonly is the wall of a cavity such as a hollow stump or a container such as a bucket or a discarded vehicle tire. The eggs generally do not hatch until they are flooded, and they may have to withstand considerable desiccation before that happens. They are not resistant to desiccation straight after oviposition, but must develop to a suitable degree first. Once they have achieved that, however, they can enter diapause for several months if they dry out. Clutches of eggs of the majority of mosquito species hatch as soon as possible, and all the eggs in the clutch hatch at much the same time. In contrast, a batch of Aedes eggs in diapause tends to hatch irregularly over an extended period of time. This makes it much more difficult to control such species than those mosquitoes whose larvae can be killed all together as they hatch. Some Anopheles species do also behave in such a manner, though not to the same degree of sophistication.

BREEDING OF MOSQUITOES

Breeding

In most species, adult females lay their eggs in stagnant water: some lay near the water's edge while others attach their eggs to aquatic plants. Each species selects the situation of the water into which it lays its eggs and does so according to its own ecological adaptations. Some breed in lakes, some in temporary puddles. Some breed in marshes, some in salt-marshes. Among those that breed in salt water, some are equally at home in fresh and salt water up to about one-third the concentration of seawater, whereas others must acclimatize themselves to the salinity. Such differences are important because certain ecological preferences keep mosquitoes away from most humans, whereas other preferences bring them right into houses at night.

Some species of mosquitoes prefer to breed in phytotelmata (natural reservoirs on plants), such as rainwater accumulated in holes in tree trunks, or in the leaf-axils of bromeliads. Some specialize in the liquid in pitchers of particular species of pitcher plants, their larvae feeding on decaying insects that had drowned there or on the associated bacteria; the genus Wyeomyia provides such examples — the harmless Wyeomyia smithii breeds only in the pitchers of Sarracenia purpunea.

However, some of the species of mosquitoes that are adapted to breeding in phytotelmata are dangerous disease vectors. In nature, they might occupy anything from a hollow tree trunk to a cupped leaf. Such species typically take readily to breeding in artificial water containers. Such casual puddles are important breeding places for some of the most serious disease vectors, such as species of Aedes that transmit dengue and yellow fever. Some with such breeding habits are disproportionately important vectors because they are well-placed to pick up pathogens from humans and pass them on. In contrast, no matter how voracious, mosquitoes that breed and feed mainly in remote wetlands and salt marshes may well remain uninfected, and if they do happen to become infected with a relevant pathogen, might seldom encounter humans to infect, in turn.

OVERVIEW OF MOSQUITO'S LIFE CYCLE

Overview

          The mosquitoes have four life stages which are: egg, larva, pupa and adult or imago. The first three stages which are egg, larva, pupa are largely aquatic. Each these stages have almost 5 to 14 days of lifespan, but depending on the species and ambient temperature, there are some important exceptions. Some mosquitoes like mosquitoes living in the regions where some seasons are freezing or waterless spend part of the year in diapause; means the delay in their development, typically for months, and carry on with life only when there is enough water or warmth for their needs. For instance Wyeomyia larvae typically get frozen into solid lumps of ice during winter and only complete their development in the spring. The eggs of some species of Aedes remain unharmed in diapause if they dry out, and hatch later when they are covered by water. 

MORPHOLOGY OF MOSQUITOES

MORPHOLOGY
        As the mosquitoes are true flies they have one pair of wings, with distinct scales on the surface. The wings of mosquitoes are long and narrow, same with their long and thin legs. They have slender and dainty bodies of length typically from 3 mm to 6 mm, with a color of dark grey to dark, some species have specific pattern. The mosquitoes tend to hold their first pair of legs outward when at rest.

FOSSIL AND EVOLUTION OF MOSQUITOES

Fossil and Evolution of Mosquitoes

              It is interesting to know that how mosquitoes are evolved. The oldest mosquito with an anatomy similar to modern mosquito was found in 79 million year ago in an Canadian amber from the Cretaceous. An older species with more primitive features was found in Burmese amber that is 90 to 100 million years old. Earlier than Cretaceous period there were no fossils found, recent studies suggests the the earliest divergence of mosquitoes between the lineages leading to Anophelinae and Culicinae occurred 226 million years ago.

               The mosquito Anopheles gambiae is currently undergoing speciation into the M(opti) and S(avanah) molecular forms. Consequently the pesticides works on M form no longer works on S form. The family Culicidae includes over 3,500 apecies which are described. They are generally divided into two subfamilies which in turn comprise some 43 genera. These figures are subject to continual change, as more species are discovered, and as DNA studies compel rearrangement of the taxonomy of the family. the two main subfamilies are the Anophelinae and Culicinae, with their genera as shown in the subsection below. The distinction is of great practical importance because the two subfamilies tend to differ in their significance as vectors of  different classes of diseases. Roughly speaking, arboviral diseases such as yellow fever and dengue fever tend to be transmitted by culicine species, not necessarily in the genus Culex. Some transmit various species of avian malaria, but it is not clear that they ever transmit any form of human malaria. Some species do however transmit various forms of filariasis, much as many Simuliidae do.

      

INTRODUCTION TO MOSQUITOES

Introduction to Mosquitoes

        It is interesting to know about mosquitoes. Mosquitoes includes about 3,500 species that are flies. The word mosquito is arise from 'mosca' word. 'Mosquito' is the spanish word for "little flies".

Mosquitoes have slender segmented body, having a pair of wings, one pair of halteres, three pairs of long hair like legs and elongated mouthparts.

        The life cycle of mosquitoes include four stages which are egg, larva, pupa and adult. The eggs of mosquitoes are laid on water surface which are then hatch and the larvae comes out which then feed on the aquatic algae or the organic materials. The adult females of most species having tude like elongated mouthparts which helps them two pierce into skin of host to feed on blood, which contains proteins and iron needed  to produce eggs. Thousands of species of mosquitoes feed on blood of various - vertebrates, including mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and some fish; along with some invertebrates, primarily other arthropods. this loss of blood is seldom(rarely) of any importance  to the host.

        When the mosquitoes bite to the host skin the saliva of mosquitoes enters into the host skin and that's why can cause the itchy rash. In addition, many species can ingest pathogens while biting, they can also transmit them into future host. That's why we can say that mosquitoes are important vectors of diseases such that malaria, yellow fever, Chikungunya, West Nile, dengue fever, filariasis, Zika and other arboviruses. By transmitting diseases, mosquitoes can cause the deaths of more people then any other animal taxon: over 700,000 each year and almost half of the people who have ever lived.

Scientific Classification

Kingdom = Animalia

Phylum = Arthropoda

Order = Diptera

Superfamily = Culicoidea

Family = Culicidea

COMMUNICATION BETWEEN HONEY BEES

Communication
          Honey bees are known to communicate through many different chemicals and odors, as is common in insects. They also communicate on a complicated dance language that conveys information about the distance and direction to a specific location (typically a nutritional source, e.g., flowers or water). The dance language is also used during the process of reproductive fission, or swarming, when scouts communicate the location and quality of nesting sites.

         The details of the signalling being used vary from species to species; for example, the two smallest species, Apis andreniformis and A. florea, dance on the upper surface of the comb, which is horizontal (not vertical, as in other species), and worker bees orient the dance in the actual compass direction of the resource to which they are recruiting.

         Apis mellifera carnica honey bees use their antennae asymmetrically for social interactions with a strong lateral preference to use their right antennae.

         There has been speculation as to honey bee consciousness. While honey bees lack the parts of the brain that a human being uses for consciousness like the cerebral cortex or even the cerebrum itself, when those parts of a human brain are damaged, the midbrain seems able to provide a small amount of consciousness. Honey bees have a tiny structure that appears similar to a human midbrain, so if it functions the same way they may possibly be able to achieve a small amount of simple awareness of their bodies.

SEXES AND CASTES OF HONEY BEES

Sexes and Castes

Honey bees have three castes: drones, workers, and queens. Drones are male, while workers and queens are female.

Drones

Drones are typically haploid, having only one set of chromosomes, and primarily exist for the purpose of reproduction. They are produced by the queen if she chooses not to fertilize an egg or by an unfertilized laying worker. There are rare instances of diploid drone larvae. This phenomenon usually arises when there is more than two generations of brother-sister mating. Sex determination in honey bees is initially due to a single locus, called the complementary sex determiner (csd) gene. In developing bees, if the conditions are that the individual is heterozygous for the csd gene, they will develop into females. If the conditions are so that the individual is hemizygous or homozygous for the csd gene, they will develop into males. The instances where the individual is homozygous at this gene are the instances of diploid males. Drones take 24 days to develop, and may be produced from summer through to autumn, numbering as many as 500 per hive. They are expelled from the hive during the winter months when the hive's primary focus is warmth and food conservation. Drones have large eyes used to locate queens during mating flights. They do not defend the hive or kill intruders, and do not have a stinger.

Workers

Workers have two sets of chromosomes. They are produced from an egg that the queen has selectively fertilized from stored sperm. Workers typically develop in 21 days. A typical colony may contain as many as 60,000 worker bees. Workers exhibit a wider range of behaviors than either queens or drones. Their duties change upon the age of the bee in the following order (beginning with cleaning out their own cell after eating through their capped brood cell): feed brood, receive nectar, clean hive, guard duty, and foraging. Some workers engage in other specialized behaviors, such as "undertaking" (removing corpses of their nestmates from inside the hive).

Workers have morphological specializations, including the pollen basket (corbicula), abdominal glands that produce beeswax, brood-feeding glands, and barbs on the sting. Under certain conditions (for example, if the colony becomes queenless), a worker may develop ovaries.

Worker honey bees perform different behavioural tasks that cause them to be exposed to different local environments. The gut microbi composition of workers varies according to the landscape and plant species they forage, such as differences in rapeseed crops, and with different hive tasks, such as nursing or food processing.

Queens

Queen honey bees are created when worker bees feed a single female larvae an exclusive diet of a food called "royal jelly". Queens are produced in oversized cells and develop in only 16 days; they differ in physiology, morphology, and behavior from worker bees. In addition to the greater size of the queen, she has a functional set of ovaries, and a spermatheca, which stores and maintains sperm after she has mated. Apis queens practice polyandry, with one female mating with multiple males. The highest documented mating frequency for an Apis queen is in Apis nigrocincta, where queens mate with an extremely high number of males with observed numbers of different matings ranging from 42 to 69 drones per queen. The sting of queens is not barbed like a worker's sting, and queens lack the glands that produce beeswax. Once mated, queens may lay up to 2,000 eggs per day. They produce a variety of pheromones that regulate behavior of workers, and helps swarms track the queen's location during the swarming.

Queen-worker conflict

When a fertile female worker produces drones, a conflict arises between her interests and those of the queen. The worker shares half her genes with the drone and one-quarter with her brothers, favouring her offspring over those of the queen. The queen shares half her genes with her sons and one-quarter with the sons of fertile female workers. This pits the worker against the queen and other workers, who try to maximize their reproductive fitness by rearing the offspring most related to them. This relationship leads to a phenomenon known as "worker policing". In these rare situations, other worker bees in the hive who are genetically more related to the queen's sons than those of the fertile workers will patrol the hive and remove worker-laid eggs. Another form of worker-based policing is aggression toward fertile females. Some studies have suggested a queen pheromone which may help workers distinguish worker- and queen-laid eggs, but others indicate egg viability as the key factor in eliciting the behavior. Worker policing is an example of forced altruism, where the benefits of worker reproduction are minimized and that of rearing the queen's offspring maximized.

In very rare instances workers subvert the policing mechanisms of the hive, laying eggs which are removed at a lower rate by other workers; this is known as anarchic syndrome. Anarchic workers can activate their ovaries at a higher rate and contribute a greater proportion of males to the hive. Although an increase in the number of drones would decrease the overall productivity of the hive, the reproductive fitness of the drones' mother would increase. Anarchic syndrome is an example of selection working in opposite directions at the individual and group levels for the stability of the hive.

Under ordinary circumstances the death (or removal) of a queen increases reproduction in workers, and a significant proportion of workers will have active ovaries in the absence of a queen. The workers of the hive produce a last batch of drones before the hive eventually collapses. Although during this period worker policing is usually absent, in certain groups of bees it continues.

According to the strategy of kin selection, worker policing is not favored if a queen does not mate multiple times. Workers would be related by three-quarters of their genes, and the difference in relationship between sons of the queen and those of the other workers would decrease. The benefit of policing is negated, and policing is less favored. Experiments confirming this hypothesis have shown a correlation between higher mating rates and increased rates of worker policing in many species of social hymenoptera.

BEE PRODUCTS

BEE PRODUCTS

Honey

Honey

Honey is the complex substance made when bees ingest nectar, process it, and store the substance into honey combs. All living species of Apis have had their honey gathered by indigenous peoples for consumption. A. mellifera and A. cerana are the only species that have had their honey harvested for commercial purposes.

Beeswax

Bee wax

Worker bees of a certain age secrete beeswax from a series of exocrine glands on their abdomens. They use the wax to form the walls and caps of the comb. As with honey, beeswax is gathered by humans for various purposes such as candle making, waterproofing, soap and cosmetics manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, art, furniture polish and more.

Bee bread

Bees collect pollen in their pollen baskets and carry it back to the hive.

Bee Bread

Worker bees combine pollen, honey and glandular secretions and allow it to ferment in the comb to make bee bread. The fermentation process releases additional nutrients from the pollen and can produce antibiotics and fatty acids which inhibit spoilage. Bee bread is eaten by nurse bees (younger workers) which produce the protein-rich royal jelly needed by the queen and developing larvae in their hypopharyngeal glands. In the hive, pollen is used as a protein source necessary during brood-rearing. In certain environments, excess pollen can be collected from the hives of A. mellifera and A. cerana. The product is used as a health supplement. It has been used with moderate success as a source of pollen for hand pollination.

Bee brood

Bee Brood

Bee brood – the eggs, larvae or pupae of honey bees – is nutritious and seen as a delicacy in countries such as Indonesia, Mexico, Thailand, and many African countries; it has been consumed since ancient times by the Chinese and Egyptians.

Propolis

Propolis

Propolis is a resinous mixture collected by honey bees from tree buds, sap flows or other botanical sources, which is used as a sealant for unwanted open spaces in the hive. Although propolis is alleged to have health benefits (tincture of Propolis is marketed as a cold and flu remedy), it may cause severe allergic reactions in some individuals. Propolis is also used in wood finishes, and gives a Stradivarius violin its unique red color.

Royal jelly

Royal Jelly

Royal jelly is a honey bee secretion used to nourish the larvae. It is marketed for its alleged but unsupported claims of health benefits. On the other hand, it may cause severe allergic reactions in some individuals.

CLAIMS OF HUMAN DEPENDENCY

Claims of human dependency

Western honey bees are often described as being essential to all human food production, leading to claims that without their pollination, all of humanity would starve, or even die out. Einstein is sometimes misquoted as saying If bees disappeared off the face of the earth, man would only have four years left to live. But not only did the scientist not say that, there is no science to support the prediction, itself.

In fact, many important crops need no insect pollination at all. The ten most important crops, comprising 60% of all human food energy, all fall into this category: Plantains are sterile and propagated by cuttings, as are cassava. Potatoes, yams, and sweet potatoes are root vegetables propagated by tubers. Soybeans are self-pollinated. Rice, wheat, sorghum, and maize are all wind-pollinated, as with all other grasses.

Similarly, no crops originating in the New World depend on the domesticated honey bee Apis mellifera at all, as the insect is invasive, having been brought over with colonists in the last few centuries. Tomatoes, peppers, squash, and all other New World crops evolved with native pollinators like squash bees, bumble bees, and other native bees. The stingless bees mentioned by Jefferson are distant relatives of the honey bees, in the genus Melipona.

Nutrion

       Honey bees obtain all of their nutritional requirements from a diverse combination of pollen and nectar. Pollen is the only natural protein source for honey bees. Adult worker honey bees consume 3.4–4.3 mg of pollen per day to meet a dry matter requirement of 66–74% protein. The rearing of one larva requires 125-187.5 mg pollen or 25-37.5 mg protein for proper development. Dietary proteins are broken down into amino acids, ten of which are considered essential to honey bees: methionine, tryptophan, arginine, lysine, histidine, phenylalanine, isoleucine, threonine, leucine, and valine. Of these amino acids, honey bees require highest concentrations of leucine, isoleucine, and valine, however elevated concentrations of arginine and lysine are required for brood rearing. In addition to these amino acids, some B vitamins including biotin, folic acid, nicotinamide, riboflavin, thiamine, pantothenate, and most importantly, pyridoxine are required to rear larvae. Pyridoxine is the most prevalent B vitamin found in royal jelly and concentrations vary throughout the foraging season with lowest concentrations found in May and highest concentrations found in July and August. Honey bees lacking dietary pyridoxine were unable to rear brood.

         Pollen is also a lipid source for honey bees ranging from 0.8% to 18.9%. Lipids are metabolized during the brood stage for precursors required for future biosynthesis. Fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K are not considered essential but have shown to significantly improve the number of brood reared. Honey bees ingest phytosterols from pollen to produce 24-methylenecholesterol and other sterols as they cannot directly synthesize cholesterol from phytosterols. Nurse bees have the ability to selectively transfer sterols to larvae through brood food.

Nectar is collected by foraging worker bees as a source of water and carbohydrates in the form of sucrose. The dominant monosaccharides in honey bee diets are fructose and glucose but the most common circulating sugar in hemolymph is trehalose which is a disaccharide consisting of two glucose molecules. Adult worker honey bees require 4 mg of utilizable sugars per day and larvae require about 59.4 mg of carbohydrates for proper development.

Honey bees require water to maintain osmotic homeostasis, prepare liquid brood food, and to cool the hive through evaporation. A colony's water needs can generally be met by nectar foraging as it has high water content. Occasionally on hot days or when nectar is limited, foragers will collect water from streams or ponds to meet the needs of the hive.

LIFE CYCLE OF HONEY BEES

Life Cycle Of Honey Bees

      As in a few other types of eusocial bees, a colony generally contains one queen bee, a fertile female; seasonally up to a few thousand drone bees, or fertile males; and tens of thousands of sterile female worker bees. Details vary among the different species of honey bees, but common features include:

1.   Eggs are laid singly in a cell in a wax honeycomb, produced and shaped by the worker bees. Using her spermatheca, the queen can choose to fertilize the egg she is laying, usually depending on which cell she is laying it into. Drones develop from unfertilised eggs and are haploid, while females (queens and worker bees) develop from fertilised eggs and are diploid. Larvae are initially fed with royal jelly produced by worker bees, later switching to honey and pollen. The exception is a larva fed solely on royal jelly, which will develop into a queen bee. The larva undergoes several moultings before spinning a cocoon within the cell, and pupating.

2.   Young worker bees, sometimes called "nurse bees", clean the hive and feed the larvae. When their royal jelly-producing glands begin to atrophy, they begin building comb cells. They progress to other within-colony tasks as they become older, such as receiving nectar and pollen from foragers, and guarding the hive. Later still, a worker takes her first orientation flights and finally leaves the hive and typically spends the remainder of her life as a forager.

3.   Worker bees cooperate to find food and use a pattern of "dancing" (known as the bee dance or waggle dance) to communicate information regarding resources with each other; this dance varies from species to species, but all living species of Apis exhibit some form of the behavior. If the resources are very close to the hive, they may also exhibit a less specific dance commonly known as the "round dance".

4.   Honey bees also perform tremble dances, which recruit receiver bees to collect nectar from returning foragers.

5.   Virgin queens go on mating flights away from their home colony to a drone congregation area, and mate with multiple drones before returning. The drones die in the act of mating. Queen honey bees do not mate with drones from their home colony.

      Colonies are established not by solitary queens, as in most bees, but by groups known as "swarms", which consist of a mated queen and a large contingent of worker bees. This group moves en masse to a nest site which was scouted by worker bees beforehand and whose location is communicated with a special type of dance. Once the swarm arrives, they immediately construct a new wax comb and begin to raise new worker brood. This type of nest founding is not seen in any other living bee genus, though several groups of vespid wasps also found new nests by swarming (sometimes including multiple queens). Also, stingless bees will start new nests with large numbers of worker bees, but the nest is constructed before a queen is escorted to the site, and this worker force is not a true "swarm"

Origin, Systematics and Distribution of honey bees

Origin, Systematics and Distribution

           Honey bees appear to have their center of origin in South and Southeast Asia (including the Philippines), as all the extant species except Apis mellifera are native to that region. Notably, living representatives of the earliest lineages to diverge (Apis florea and Apis andreniformis) have their center of origin there.

The first Apis bees appear in the fossil record at the Eocene-Oligocene boundary (34 mya), in European deposits. The origin of these prehistoric honey bees does not necessarily indicate Europe as the place of origin of the genus, only that the bees were present in Europe by that time. Few fossil deposits are known from South Asia, the suspected region of honey bee origin, and fewer still have been thoroughly studied.

No Apis species existed in the New World during human times before the introduction of A. mellifera by Europeans. Only one fossil species is documented from the New World, Apis nearctica, known from a single 14 million-year-old specimen from Nevada.

The close relatives of modern honey bees – e.g. bumblebees and stingless bees – are also social to some degree, and social behavior seems a plesiomorphic trait that predates the origin of the genus. Among the extant members of Apis, the more basal species make single, exposed combs, while the more recently evolved species nest in cavities and have multiple combs, which has greatly facilitated their domestication.

Most species have historically been cultured or at least exploited for honey and beeswax by humans indigenous to their native ranges. Only two species have been truly domesticated: Apis mellifera and Apis cerana indica. A. mellifera has been cultivated at least since the time of the building of the Egyptian pyramids, and only that species has been moved extensively beyond its native range.

Honey bees are the only extant members of the tribe Apini. Today's honey bees constitute three clades: Micrapis (dwarf honey bees), Megapis (giant honey bee), and Apis (domestic honey bees and close relatives).

Micrapis

         Apis florea and Apis andreniformis are small honey bees of southern and southeastern Asia. They make very small, exposed nests in trees and shrubs. Their stings are often incapable of penetrating human skin, so the hive and swarms can be handled with minimal protection. They occur largely sympatrically, though they are very distinct evolutionarily and are probably the result of allopatric speciation, their distribution later converging.

Given that A. florea is more widely distributed and A. andreniformis is considerably more aggressive, honey is, if at all, usually harvested from the former only. They are the most ancient extant lineage of honey bees, maybe diverging in the Bartonian (some 40 million years ago or slightly later) from the other lineages, but do not seem to have diverged from each other a long time before the Neogene. Apis florea have smaller wing spans than its sister species. Apis florea are also completely yellow with the exception of the scutellum of workers, which is black.

Megapis

         One species is recognized in the subgenus Megapis. It usually builds single or a few exposed combs on high tree limbs, on cliffs, and sometimes on buildings. They can be very fierce. Periodically robbed of their honey by human "honey hunters", colonies are easily capable of stinging a human being to death if provoked.

·         Apis dorsata, the giant honey bee, is native and widespread across most of South and Southeast Asia.

o    A. d. binghami, the Indonesian giant honey bee, is classified as the Indonesian subspecies of the giant honey bee or a distinct species; in the latter case, A. d. breviligula and / or other lineages would probably also have to be considered species.

o    A. d. laboriosa, the Himalayan giant honey bee, was initially described as a distinct species. Later, it was included in A. dorsata as a subspecies based on the biological species concept, though authors applying a genetic species concept have suggested it should be considered a separate species. Essentially restricted to the Himalayas, it differs little from the giant honey bee in appearance, but has extensive behavioral adaptations that enable it to nest in the open at high altitudes despite low ambient temperatures. It is the largest living honey bee.

Apis

       Eastern Apis species include three or four species, including A. koschevnikovi, Apis nigrocincta, and A. cerana. The genetics of the western honey bee A. mellifera are unclear.

Koschevnikov's honey bee

       Koschevnikov's honey bee (Apis koschevnikovi) is often referred to in the literature as the "red bee of Sabah"; however, A. koschevnikovi is pale reddish in Sabah State, Borneo, Malaysia, but a dark, coppery color in the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra, Indonesia. Its habitat is limited to the tropical evergreen forests of the Malay Peninsula, Borneo and Sumatra and they do not live in tropical evergreen rain forests which extend into Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia and Vietnam.

Philippine honey bee

      Apis nigrocincta is a cavity-nesting species. The species has rust-colored scapes, legs, and clypeuses, with reddish-tan hair color that covers most of the body.^[14]

Eastern honey bee

     Apis cerana, the eastern honey bee proper, is the traditional honey bee of southern and eastern Asia. It was domesticated as subspecies A. c. indica and kept in hives in a fashion similar to A. mellifera, though on a more limited, regional scale.

     It has not been possible yet to resolve its relationship to the Bornean A. c. nuluensis and Apis nigrocincta from the Philippines to satisfaction; the most recent hypothesis is that these are indeed distinct species, but that A. cerana is still parphyletic, consisting of several separate species.

Western honey bee

     A. mellifera, the most common domesticated species, was the third insect to have its genome mapped. It seems to have originated in eastern tropical Africa and spread from there to Europe and eastwards into Asia to the Tien Shan range. It is variously called the European, western, or common honey bee in different parts of the world. Many subspecies have adapted to the local geographic and climatic environments; in addition breeds such as the Buckfast Bee, have been bred. Behavior, color, and anatomy can be quite different from one subspecies or even strain to another.

     A. mellifera phylogeny is the most enigmatic of all honey bee species. It seems to have diverged from its eastern relatives only during the Late Miocene. This would fit the hypothesis that the ancestral stock of cave-nesting honey bees was separated into the western group of East Africa and the eastern group of tropical Asia by desertification in the Middle East and adjacent regions, which caused declines of food plants and trees that provided nest sites, eventually causing gene flow to cease.

    The diversity of A. mellifera subspecies is probably the product of a largely Early Pleistocene radition aided by climate and habitat changes during the Last ice age. That the western honey bee has been intensively managed by humans for many millennia – including hybridization and introductions – has apparently increased the speed of its evolution and confounded the DNA sequence data to a point where little of substance can be said about the exact relationships of many A. mellifera subspecies.

       Apis mellifera is not native to the Americas, so it was not present when the European explorers and colonists arrived. However, other native bee species were kept and traded by indigenous peoples. In 1622, European colonists brought the European dark bee (A. m. mellifera) to the Americas first, followed later by the Italian honey bee (A. m. ligustica) and others. Many of the crops that depend on western honey bees for pollination have also been imported since colonial times. Escaped swarms (known as "wild" bees, but actually feral) spread rapidly as far as the Great Plains, usually preceding the colonists. Honey bees did not naturally cross the Rocky Mountain; they were transported by the Mormon pioneers to Utah in the late 1840s, and by ship to California in the early 1850s.

Africanized bee   

       Africanized bees (known colloquially as "killer bees") are hybrids between European stock and the East African lowland subspecies A. m. scutellata; they are often more aggressive than European bees and do not create as much of a honey surplus, but are more resistant to disease and are better foragers. Accidentally released from quarantine in Brazil, they have spread to North America and constitute a pest in some regions. However, these strains do not overwinter well, so are not often found in the colder, more northern parts of North America. The original breeding experiment for which the African bees were brought to Brazil in the first place has continued (though not as originally intended). Novel hybrid strains of domestic and redomesticated Africanized bees combine high resilience to tropical conditions and good yields. They are popular among beekeepers in Brazil.