But even if we accept this past season as more soap opera than prestige drama, you cant deny that The Wolf and the Dragon was meant to leave us wildly. Bee Wikipedia. Bees are flying insects closely related to wasps and ants, known for their role in pollination and, in the case of the best known bee species, the European honey bee, for producing honey and beeswax. Bees are a monophyletic lineage within the superfamily Apoidea and are presently considered a clade, called Anthophila. There are nearly 2. They are found on every continent except Antarctica, in every habitat on the planet that contains insect pollinated flowering plants. Some species including honey bees, bumblebees, and stingless bees live socially in colonies. Bees are adapted for feeding on nectar and pollen, the former primarily as an energy source and the latter primarily for protein and other nutrients. Most pollen is used as food for larvae. Bee pollination is important both ecologically and commercially the decline in wild bees has increased the value of pollination by commercially managed hives of honey bees. Bees range in size from tiny stingless bee species whose workers are less than 2 millimetres 0. Megachile pluto, the largest species of leafcutter bee, whose females can attain a length of 3. The most common bees in the Northern Hemisphere are the Halictidae, or sweat bees, but they are small and often mistaken for wasps or flies. Vertebrate predators of bees include birds such as bee eaters insect predators include beewolves and dragonflies. Human beekeeping or apiculture has been practised for millennia, since at least the times of Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece. Apart from honey and pollination, honey bees produce beeswax, royal jelly and propolis. Bees have appeared in mythology and folklore, through all phases of art and literature, from ancient times to the present day, though primarily focused in the Northern Hemisphere, where beekeeping is far more common. Evolution. The ancestors of bees were wasps in the family Crabronidae, which were predators of other insects. The switch from insect prey to pollen may have resulted from the consumption of prey insects which were flower visitors and were partially covered with pollen when they were fed to the wasp larvae. This same evolutionary scenario may have occurred within the vespoid wasps, where the pollen wasps evolved from predatory ancestors. Qbte0EVOM/UH0j9OYAhvI/AAAAAAAAAw8/qJJk10P1k08/s1600/vlcsnap-2012-10-15-23h10m12s138.png' alt='Dragon Wasps Full Movie Part 1' title='Dragon Wasps Full Movie Part 1' />The Wolf and the Dragon had its own problems to be sureone in particular made me want to actually scream in irritationthe main one of which was its. Update 8517 725pm ET Googles new Vice President of Diversity, Integrity Governance Danielle Brown has issued her own memo to Google employees in response to. Stephen Jennings, Actor Starship Troopers 3 Marauder. Stephen Jennings is an actor, known for Starship Troopers 3 Marauder 2008, The Color of Friendship 2000. Former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick is down, but he somehow does not yet consider himself out, according to a Sunday report in the New York Times. Dragon Wasps Full Movie Part 1' title='Dragon Wasps Full Movie Part 1' />Until recently, the oldest non compression bee fossil had been found in New Jersey amber, Cretotrigona prisca of Cretaceous age, a corbiculate bee. A bee fossil from the early Cretaceous 1. Melittosphex burmensis, is considered an extinct lineage of pollen collecting Apoidea sister to the modern bees. Derived features of its morphology apomorphies place it clearly within the bees, but it retains two unmodified ancestral traits plesiomorphies of the legs two mid tibial spurs, and a slender hind basitarsus, showing its transitional status. By the Eocene 4. The highly eusocialcorbiculate Apidae appeared roughly 8. Watch Birds Of America Online Hulu on this page. Mya, and the Allodapini within the Apidae around 5. Mya. 8 The Colletidae appear as fossils only from the late Oligocene 2. Mya to early Miocene. The Melittidae are known from Palaeomacropis eocenicus in the Early Eocene. The Megachilidae are known from trace fossils characteristic leaf cuttings from the Middle Eocene. The Andrenidae are known from the Eocene Oligocene boundary, around 3. Mya, of the Florissant shale. The Halictidae first appear in the Early Eocene1. The Stenotritidae are known from fossil brood cells of Pleistocene age. Coevolution. The earliest animal pollinated flowers were shallow, cup shaped blooms pollinated by insects such as beetles, so the syndrome of insect pollination was well established before the first appearance of bees. The novelty is that bees are specialized as pollination agents, with behavioral and physical modifications that specifically enhance pollination, and are the most efficient pollinating insects. In a process of coevolution, flowers developed floral rewards1. Bees also developed structures known as scopal hairs and pollen baskets to collect and carry pollen. The location and type differ among and between groups of bees. Most bees have scopal hairs located on their hind legs or on the underside of their abdomens, some bees in the family Apidae possess pollen baskets on their hind legs while very few species lack these entirely and instead collect pollen in their crops. This drove the adaptive radiation of the angiosperms, and, in turn, the bees themselves. Bees have not only coevolved with flowers but it is believed that some bees have coevolved with mites. Some bees provide tufts of hairs called acarinaria that appear to provide lodgings for mites in return, it is believed that the mites eat fungi that attack pollen, so the relationship in this case may be mutualistc. Phylogeny. External. This cladogram is based on Debevic et al, 2. Anthophila arose from deep within the Crabronidae, which is therefore paraphyletic. The placement of the Heterogynaidae is uncertain. The small subfamily Mellininae was not included in their analysis. Internal. This cladogram of the bee families is based on Hedtke et al., 2. Dasypodaidae and Meganomiidae as subfamilies inside the Melittidae. English names, where available, are given in parentheses. Description. The lapping mouthparts of a honeybee, showing labium and maxillae. It is usually easy to recognise that a particular insect is a bee. They differ from closely related groups such as wasps by having branched or plume like setae bristles, combs on the forelimbs for cleaning their antennae, small anatomical differences in the limb structure and the venation of the hind wings, and in females, by having the seventh dorsal abdominal plate divided into two half plates. Behaviourally, one of the most obvious characteristics of bees is that they collect pollen to provide provisions for their young, and have the necessary adaptations to do this. However, certain wasp species such as pollen wasps have similar behaviours, and a few species of bee scavenge from carcases to feed their offspring. The worlds largest species of bee is thought to be the Indonesian resin bee Megachile pluto, whose females can attain a length of 3. The smallest species may be dwarf stingless bees in the tribe Meliponini whose workers are less than 2 millimetres 0. A bee has a pair of large compound eyes which cover much of the surface of the head. Between and above these are three small simple eyes ocelli which provide information for the bee on light intensity. The antennae usually have thirteen segments in males and twelve in females and are geniculate, having an elbow joint part way along. They house large numbers of sense organs that can detect touch mechanoreceptors, smell and taste, and small, hairlike mechanoreceptors that can detect air movement so as to hear sounds. The mouthparts are adapted for both chewing and sucking by having both a pair of mandibles and a long proboscis for sucking up nectar. The thorax has three segments, each with a pair of robust legs, and a pair of membranous wings on the hind two segments. The front legs of corbiculate bees bear combs for cleaning the antennae, and in many species the hind legs bear pollen baskets, flattened sections with incurving hairs to secure the collected pollen. The wings are synchronised in flight and the somewhat smaller hind wings connect to the forewings by a row of hooks along their margin which connect to a groove in the forewing. The abdomen has nine segments, the hindermost three being modified into the sting. Sociality. Haplodiploid breeding system. According to inclusive fitness theory, organisms can gain fitness not just through increasing their own reproductive output, but also that of close relatives. In evolutionary terms, individuals should help relatives when Cost lt Relatedness Benefit. The requirements for eusociality are more easily fulfilled by haplodiploid species such as bees because of their unusual relatedness structure.