The Bombus genus is one of the largest genus for pollinators in the United States, with over 250 species known (Carvell, 2002). B. californicus is a species with a wide range, extending through all of California and even into parts of Nevada and Oregon (Soltz, 1987). This particular species is a generalist species; it feeds from many plants and inhabits the Oak Woodland Savanna (see Table 1) that is often found near grassland habitats. It is a ground nesting bee that lives in small colonies that have between 50 and 400 individuals (Cueva del Castillo et al., 2015). These are colony bees as, starting in the 1980s, there became a drastic reduction in the number of queens found foraging (only two were found in 1980). This led to
Everyone has a secret life that they keep hidden from the rest of the world. Lies are told on a daily basis in order to keep these lives stashed in the dark. In The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd, the bees are the ones that have the most secret life of all. They each have their own specific role to play deep within the hive. It's obvious that the author had meant for some of her characters to portray the roles that these buzzing insects have to dutifully fulfill every duty. Lily and Zach are the field bees, August is a nurse bee, and the Lady of Chains is the Queen bee.
Ramona the pest by Beverly Cleary is a silly, exciting and fun book to read. Ramona is excited about the first day of kindergarten. But when she gets there it isn’t what she thought it would be like. Ramona is distracted about another classmate’s hair and can’t wait any longer to touch her hair. Ramona gets in trouble a few times but then gets over it. Her sister Beezus (Beatrice) thinks that she is a pest and everybody in her neighborhood thinks she’s a pest. At first when she starts kindergarten she loves her teacher but when Ramona gets in trouble a few times she’s beginning to thinks her teacher doesn’t like her anymore.
Miline, Ira Mark. Ed. "The Secret Life of Bees." Novels for Students. Vol. 27. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Print.
Intro: Working around the hives; dedicated and faster with each movement. Honey drizzling in golden crevices; a family unit working together, buzzing in harmony. Bees and beehives is a significant motif in the novel Secret Life of Bees: By Sue Monk Kidd because it represents the community of women in the novel. It also represents Lily Owen’s longing and need for a mother figure in her life. And finally, it was significant because the bees lived a secret life, just as Lily and Rosaleen did in the novel.
The bees symbolize Lily’s unspoken guides throughout the novel. Kidd’s constant reference to the bees indicate that Lily eventually understands the importance of female power in the bee community, which she connects to her own life. When Lily initially sees the bees in her room, Rosaleen warns her that they can sting her if she tries to catch them, but Lily ignores her and continues to trap them, thus asserting her determination. Later, the bees reveal the message to Lily that she should leave her father. Kidd notes that one bee landed on Lily’s state map that she kept tacked on the wall, foreshadowing Lily and Rosaleen’s journey to Tiburon (10). The bees also symbolize the secret life that Lily lives as she hides her secret of running away from home. The hive represents society while the bees represent all of the humans inside. August tells Lily about the hives and announces, “Most people don’t have any idea about all the complicated life going on inside a hive. Bees have a secret life we don’t know anything about” (Kidd 148). The beehive cannot sur...
A symbol in The Secret Life of Bees is the queen bee, one is found in all hives especially the Caribbean Pink Hive in Tiburon, South Carolina. The queen bee refers to a mated female that lives in the hive; she is usually a mother to most if not all the bees in the beehive. This symbol represents not just the bees hives that the Boatwrights work with, but also August Boatwright herself. The queen bee is a mother to all the bees in the hive just as August is for Lily, Rosaleen, June, and May, sometimes the mother you are born to is not truly meant to be your mother.
guards to take care of the beehive. These bees are usually very old and with a lot of
What do you think when you think of bees? I think of honey, pollination, and soon, new life. According to Walt D. Osborne, “Bees are vital for the pollination of more than 90 fruit and vegetable crops worldwide, including almonds, peaches, soybeans, apples, pears, cherries, raspberries, blackberries, cranberries, watermelons, cantaloupes, cucumbers, and strawberries,” (Osborne 9-11) but each year a large percent of hives have vanished due to many different factors such as stress. Most people would declare that the average honey bee is insufficiently important to the world because bees are pests to home owners everywhere, but bees are extremely important to earths’ survival than any other pollinator in the world; they help pollinate most of the world’s agriculture; yet in the recent years bee populations have plummeted rapidly. I am writing this paper to create awareness that the agricultural society ought to stop or lessen the spraying of pesticides/ insecticides on crops, unnatural diets and overcrowding in the hives.
Think for a moment of a world without bees; a world without our buzzing friend. They might look like they barely do much to help our ecosystem. However, bees are a vital part of our agriculture and this makes it vital that we keep them around. The bee population decline in recent years is troubling for both us and our little friends. As their friends, we must do all we can in order to ensure their survival which in turn will ensure our own.
Our livestock depend on bee-pollinated plants like grain. Poorly pollinated plants produce fewer fruits and seeds, leading to higher prices (New Agriculturist, n.d.). Some crops are entirely dependent on pollinators such as almonds and others are 90 percent dependent on blueberries and cherries (ABF, 2015). Bees give us honey and we use this honey in food, shampoo, and moisturizers (Mercola, 2015). Bees pollinate 70 out of our 100 major crops; that includes apples, cucumbers, pumpkins, and many more.
Flowering plants have two main reproductive parts; the male part is called the stamen and produces pollen, while the female part is called the pistil. For pollination to occur, the pollen must be transferred from the stamen to the pistil. This transfer can occasionally be caused by wind, but it is most often facilitated by animals called pollinators. Pollinators do not intentionally set out to fertilize flowers; rather, they unintentionally spread pollen while roaming from plant to plant in search of food. There are many different species – including birds, butterflies, and bats – that act as pollinators, and many of these species are also suffering declines in population. However, honeybees are the most pr...
Brazilian scientists imported African honeybee queens in the 1950’s in order to breed a honeybee for use in tropical climates. Some swarms escaped into the wild. Because they were highly adapted for tropical survival and had no natural competitors, they thrived and spread rapidly through South America, extending their range by as much as 500 km (300 mi) per year. By the 1980s, Africanized honeybees had reached Central America and soon colonized Mexico. In 1990, the first swarm was found in the United States. The bees spread from Texas to New Mexico and Arizona and then into California by 1994.
Winfree, R. . The conservation and restoration of wild bees. Annuals of the New York Academy of Sciences. Volume 1195, 3 May 2010, Pages 169 – 197.
Main Objective: This study focused on determining the ecological relationship between evolved bumble bees with longer tongues, particularly the Bombus balteatus and Bombus sylvicola, and floral sources with elongated corolla tubes.
Insects are some of the most important creatures in our world. They play a very large role in many tasks that are vital to human surviva,l like pollinating and effective decomposing. Insects have impacted science, environment, human development, and food supply in a variety of ways. Insect pollination is one of the primary beneficial functions of insects on human development.