Fun Trivia » Animals » Insects » Bees and Wasps

One Asian giant hornet can kill about 40 honeybees each minute through decapitation using their large and strong mandibles. The bees' stings are ineffective because of the size and armour-like exteriors of the hornets. As few as 50 Asian giant hornets can decimate a huge colony of bees (tens of thousands) in only a few hours. Difficulty: Hard.

 

10, 75, 100

When the worker bee happens on a good source of nectar, pollen or water, she performs a special dance relating to her find. This identifies what she has found, and specific directions equivalent to compass bearings and distance from the hive. Difficulty: Very Easy.

 

Sing a special buzzing song, Whisper in the Queen's ear, Draw a map on the hive wall

Africanised or killer bees are highly aggressive descendants from African colonies, which have cross-bred with both the Apis Mellifera (European Honey-bee) and native species. In Australia, we have a number of varieties of stingless honeybees, which are useful in hot northern conditions; but the most commonly used are the European varieties, as they provide large quantities of honey, and are not aggressive if left undisturbed. Difficulty: Easy.

 

Western honeybee, Italian honeybee, Australian stingless bee

The bumblebee belongs to the Apinae subfamily and the genus Bombus. Other members of the Apinae subfamily include honey bees, stingless bees and orchid bees. Difficulty: Hard.

 

Apis , Frieseomelitta, Aglae

Tarantula hawk is the common name for various species of wasps in the genus Pepsis. Tarantula hawks are large, with average adults reaching or slightly exceeding 2 inches (5 cm) in length. Exactly which Pepsis wasps are considered tarantula hawks is a matter of some debate. Some use the term only for species found in South and North America, essentially anywhere tarantulas range, but they are most common in desert regions of Mexico and the southwestern U.S. Some similar species found in Asia and Africa have also been called tarantula hawks.

The idea of a tarantula/hawk hybrid is of course absurd, but once the image of an eight taloned bird of prey (with its distinctive pincerbeak) was in my head, there was no turning back. Difficulty: Average.

 

another type spider, another type of bird, a hybrid creature that is half tarantula, half red tailed hawk

The hive consists of the queen bee (normally just one), worker bees and drones. Her main role is to produce eggs, some say up to 2,000 per day. Without the queen to provide replacement bees, the hive will die. The drones are the male bees, who have no jobs in the hive. They have no pollen baskets for collecting, no sting to defend themselves nor glands for making wax. Their primary role is to mate with queens, after which they die. The worker bees do everything else, more or less. There is no king bee.
Difficulty: Easy.

 

Worker bee collective, King bee, Drone

Western honey bees or European honey bees (Apis mellifera) are native to Europe, Asia and Africa and were introduced to North America in the 1600s by European explorers and settlers. The Western honey bee quickly spread throughout the United States and North America, helped by settlers bound for the west coast of the United States. Difficulty: Hard.

 

Natural selection. They are native to the United States, Imported by the Chinese, Imported from South America

Bees belong to the phylum Arthropoda and the class Insecta. The order to which they belong, Hymenoptera, also includes ants, wasps and sawflies. The precise number of different bee species is not known, but is probably around 20,000. They inhabit every continent with the exception of Antarctica. The best-known bee is the European honeybee (sometimes called the Western honeybee). Their coexistence with, and usefulness to, mankind can be traced back to ancient times; they feature in the mythology of several civilisations and were worshipped in many cultures.

Odonata relates to dragonflies and damselflies, and Dermaptera is the order to which earwigs belong. Coleoptera is the largest order of insects, made up of beetles and weevils. Difficulty: Hard.

 

Odonata, Dermaptera, Coleoptera

The area can also be called a bee yard. An aviary is a place that birds are kept. Difficulty: Hard.

 

Hiviary, Barn yard, Aviary

The large earth bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) is a species of bee which inhabits the northern hemisphere. These bees can be found in a wide range of habitats particularly in neighourhoods.


Question submitted by Porazzen. Difficulty: Hard.

 

Bombus ternarius, Bombus pratorum, Bombus hypnorum

Just a fleeting glimpse of these colourful creatures is enough to strike fear into the hearts of grown men, but it needn't be that way. They're really not the vicious beasts many people perceive them to be. Difficulty: Easy.

 

Green, Brown and white, Blue

There are several species of social wasps of which the common wasp is one. Vespula rufa is known as the red wasp and tends to nest underground. Vespa crabro is the largest of the social wasps - the hornet. It is mainly a southern species and nests in trees. The Vespula austriaca is known as the cuckoo wasp. It has no workers and lays its eggs in other species nests - hence the name. Difficulty: Hard.

 

Vespula Rufa, Vespa Crabro, Vespula Austriaca

After spotting an abundant food source, the worker returns to the hive and performs a dance. The movements indicate the direction and distance of the food source. (Time Life - Wildlife Fact File). Difficulty: Easy.

 

Buzzes at them., Posts directions on the highway., Places an ad in the paper.

The drone exists only to mate with the queen, and is well fed and cared for by his sisters, the workers. Difficulty: Very Easy.

 

Worker, Bumblebee, Fred or George

The brood box is where the new swarm is placed. The Queen, her workers and some drones take residence in the box, which contains upright frames "primed" with sheets of beeswax or wax coated plastic with shallow hexagonal dimples as a base for the honeycomb. This is where the Queen will commence laying eggs in the cells cleaned and prepared for her by the workers. Difficulty: Hard.

 

Super, Nest Box, Starter box

Coulombs are a part of physics. Tomes are scholarly books. Aerodromes are to do with flying aircraft. Pheromones are chemicals queen bees secrete that tell their worker bees which hive is home. Every queen gives off a different scent. Difficulty: Easy.

 

Coulombs, Tomes, Aerodromes

If the hive gets too hot, you will see bees lined up at the hive entrance beating their wings to extract heat from the hive. They will also use evaporative cooling techniques, placing droplets of water in the hive. Poor ventilation in the hive and crowding can contribute to the hive getting too hot. Sometimes unoccupied bees will hang on the outside of the hive like a beard until the temperature inside drops.

During winter when the outside temperature drops too low, the bees will cluster together, vibrating their flight muscles to generate heat and keep the queen and the brood cells warm.
Difficulty: Hard.

 

Swarm, Reduce activity by going to sleep, Unplug air holes in the hive

The remains of the bee, which had been fossilised in amber, was found in a mine in the Hukawng Valley, in northern Myanmar. Although very small at around 3mm long, it had been remarkably well preserved. The bee, named Melittosphex burmensis, shared some of its characteristics with the wasp. It is estimated that it dated back to around 100 million years old, in the Early Cretaceous period. Previous records had only dated bees back to around 65 million years old, so the find was a major scientific breakthrough. Difficulty: Hard.

 

on a mountain in Kenya, in a cave in Peru, up a cliff face in Australia

In a strong hive two larger boxes are at the bottom with nine frames in each. Each frame will have starter sheets of wax in them to encourage the bees to begin to form wax comb. This gives the bees plenty of room to work and raise their young. Overcrowding can cause bees to swarm, (leave the hive), and find a better home. Difficulty: Hard.

 

Home base, Nursery boxes, Bee pad

Bees live on every continent except Antarctica. This is because there are no flowering plants present due to cold climate conditions.

Question submitted by Purcy.
Difficulty: Very Easy.

 

Asia, Australia, Europe

The Asian giant hornet's stinger is at the rear end of its body. When it stings, it injects a potent venom that can cause pain and death to its foe. Scientists have developed a scale of toxicity for insect venom and have found that the actual venom is about as toxic as other wasps, but in the case of the Asian giant hornet, there is simply much more injected with each sting. This is what makes their venom more lethal. Difficulty: Hard.

 

2.5 mm (1/10 inch), 12.7 mm (1/2 inch), 19 mm (3/4 inch)

The drones will continue to be cared for until the queen has started producing brood, and often longer. However, most drones are forcibly ejected from the hive before the onset of winter in order to maintain an efficient colony with few non-productive mouths to feed. Difficulty: Hard.

 

They will be turned away from the hive by the workers, They will be stung to death by the queen, One of them joins the queen as her consort

Drones are useless mouths to feed within the hive, and during the cooler days of approaching winter, the majority of drones will be evicted from the hive by the workers. In spring the surviving drones will follow an emerging queen from the hive to mate with her. This 'nuptial flight' will provide the queen with enough semen to last the rest of her life, which is spent in laying eggs. Difficulty: Easy.

 

Worker, Hornet, Bumblebee

Their back legs have 'baskets' to hold the pollen they collect. Pollen comes from many different sources such as covers, weeds, and blueberries. Different types of pollen can create distinguishing features in the honey. For example, clover honey is what you see in a grocery store walking down the aisle. The raw, organic blueberry honey I see at work is a deep dark purple-blue color. Difficulty: Average.

 

Front legs, Wings, Head

There are over 250 known species of bumblebees. These species are primarily found in higher latitudes or at higher altitude in the Northern Hemisphere. There are some species found in South America, Europe, New Zealand and Tasmania. Difficulty: Hard.

 

25, 50, 100

Sorry if this was a blatant trick question, but I saw no good way around it. Although females do hunt tarantulas, they do not eat them, aside from any juicy spider insides inadvertantly spilled during the fight. Difficulty: Hard.

 

tarantulas, bird eggs, insects

Foraging bees collect nectar and pollen. The pollen can be formed into granules with a bit of nectar or honey to form bee pollen. Another source of protein is royal jelly, which includes pollen as an ingredient, however worker bees create it rather than eat it. Royal jelly is fed to all bee larvae for their first three days. Difficulty: Hard.

 

Nectar, Royal jelly, Other insects

Only worker honey bees die after stinging. The stinger of a honey bee is barbed, unlike that of other bees such as carpenter and bumble bees which have smooth needle-like stingers, as does the queen honey bee. This means that once a worker honey bee stings something with skin or membrane thick enough for the barbs to catch hold on, the bee can't just retract the stinger and go on to sting again. Other bees can but, with the exception of a queen dealing with her rivals, they generally didn't want to sting anything in the first place and rarely take advantage of this option.

You might think, then, that the barbed stinger of the honey bee would be easily detachable, but sadly it isn't. When the stinger catches and the bee pulls away, not only the stinger and venom sac pull free of the bee, but part of its abdomen and, usually, intestines go with them as well. Death follows pretty quickly, so stinging is understandably a last resort for honey bees and they are extremely unlikely to sting without provocation or in defense of a nearby hive. Difficulty: Hard.

 

Yup, a well-known fact., Nope, that's an urban myth., It's only true of bumble bees.

The honey bee is a bee, a flying insect, and is closely related to wasps and ants. Bees have six legs and pollinate, wasps have six legs and prey upon or parasitizes other species, ants have six legs , and only some species can fly. Spiders are arthropods that have eight legs. All have their important niche in nature. Please think about that before you squish or swat one of these critters. Difficulty: Hard.

 

Wasp, Ant , Spider

The word apiarist comes from the Latin 'apis', meaning bees. Other derivatives of the word are the name given to the study of bees, apiology, and apiary, meaning the place where honeybees and their hives are kept. Famous people to have kept bees include Sir Edmund Hillary (1919-2008), the first man to conquer Mount Everest. The terms lepidopterist, herpetologist and aquarist relate to the study of butterflies and moths, amphibians and reptiles, and fish respectively.

In literature, the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes retired to the Sussex countryside to keep bees as referred to in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's short story 'His Last Bow'. Bees also feature in A A Milne's 'Winnie the Pooh' stories, honey being Pooh's favourite food for which he will go to extraordinary lengths to obtain. Difficulty: Hard.

 

herpetologist, aquarist, lepidopterist

Boxes called supers are placed on top of the brood chambers. These boxes are usually smaller in size and have ten frames with starter wax sheets. The bees will begin making wax comb and then will fill the comb with nectar they have gathered. The nectar they gather from flowers mixes with enzymes in their stomach to make honey. They regurgitate the honey into the comb and will fan the honey to reduce the moisture level. Honey with too high of a moisture level is prone to fermentation. Difficulty: Hard.

 

Honey boxes, Extra boxes, Sweet boxes

Wasps do not sting for no reason. The only time they do it is when they feel that they are - or their colony is - under threat.
It always makes me laugh that on the few occasions I've seen friends get stung, they've claimed the wasp did it for no apparent reason, conveniently forgetting that they'd been trying to hit it with a rolled up newspaper just moments before. Wasps are not aggressive creatures (unless they feel they are under threat), and we humans can live in harmony with them as long as we just leave them to do their own thing.
Mind you, it's only female wasps that sting, and I've certainly been stung by a few women in my time... Difficulty: Easy.

 

Courtship ritual, They do not have a reason. They just do it, To elevate its status within the wasp community

The female is the only wasp that can sting. The sting itself is an adapted ovipositor, the organ with which the female insect lays her eggs. As males don't lay eggs - they don't have one. Difficulty: Hard.

 

Both, The males, Neither

The eggs hatch in 3 days. ( Time Life - Wildlife Fact File). Difficulty: Hard.

 

13 days, 8 days, 3 months

Bees produce several different kinds of foods - the majority of bee larvae eat honey, the queen (and queen larvae) are fed royal jelly.

Bee bread is a fermented product made by the worker which contains all the protein. Difficulty: Hard.

 

Flower petals, Nectar, Bread and jam

Quickly flick off the bee, and brush off the sting. Don't grasp the top of the sting, as it is a bulb filled with venom. You should have your smoker in your hand or very close. A strong puff of smoke on your skin will disguise the scent created by the now dying bee. Smoke also encourages the workers to enter the hive and gorge themselves on honey. Cover up quickly.

Don't do any of the alternatives. Continue to move calmly, use a little smoke, and the bees should calm down. Difficulty: Easy.

 

Kill the stinging bee as a warning to others, Wave my arms quickly to frighten the swarm, Run for it! There's THOUSANDS of them!

Scientists are still doing research, but as of now nobody knows the cause. It's a major problem because it will wipe out whole hives. Colony collapse disorder occurs when the worker bees in a hive suddenly take off for no apparent reason. They leave and abandon the queen as well as their duties. This makes it easier for predators, such as yellow jackets, to invade and take over. Difficulty: Average.

 

Poison, Tainted water sources, Viruses from predators

Bumblebees are social insects which form colonies. A colony consists of a single queen bumblebee and approximately fifty bumblebees living together. Difficulty: Easy.

 

herd, web, basket

Tarantula hawks are certainly capable of stinging humans. The sting is not generally fatal, though I suppose there could be some sort of extreme allergic reaction. The sting may cause some swelling and/or discoloration in the immediate area of the wound, but the most noticeable result of the sting (to both the recipient and anyone around them) is excruciating pain which typically results in flailing about, screaming, and saying many words not fit for the ears of children. There are generally no long term effects, but the unlucky few who have been through it have described their condition in the 3-5 minute period of incapacitation immediately following the sting as abject misery, akin to receiving a severe electric shock. Fortunately this is a rare occurrence as tarantula hawks avoid humans and sting them only as a defensive maneuver if the wasp feels threatened and trapped. You would essentially have to be trying to get stung for it to happen.

In this case there was even less of a threat because the wasp, likely old and/or wounded, died in the crib right where it landed (of natural causes not of protective mother action) My neighbor was relieved and even laughed about it once her initial fears were eased. Still, it seems like it was at least a year before I saw her windows open again. Difficulty: Hard.

 

her baby was still alive, tarantula hawks cannot sting humans, the sting causes widespread discoloration of the skin, which was not present

An enlarged queen cell is made to take the egg, which is a standard egg. After the first three days when all larvae are fed royal jelly, only those destined to be queen bees continue to be fed royal jelly. Royal jelly, a secretion coming from worker bees, contains a protein called royalactin which is responsible for the development of the morphological changes found in a queen bee. This is an example of you are what you eat.

Various things may trigger the creation of a new queen, typically the existing queen begins to fail or there are favourable conditions for swarming (when the old queen leaves the hive with a large part of the colony). The sudden death of the existing queen may lead also lead to the creation of an emergency queen, failing which, the colony will fail.
Difficulty: Hard.

 

A special queen egg is laid, The age of the existing queen, The temperature of the cell