African Honey Bee Lab Report
Adapt a Beast: African Honeybee
Africanized honey bees are already able to survive in unpredictable weather conditions. They are more evolved in this way the other species of honey bee. Africanized bees became more common than regular European honey bees. Since they can breed more quickly they became over populated.
* * *
In a lab in Arizona hundreds of colonies of bees were brought in to pollinate the genetically modified fruits and vegetables while they were being tested. The lab was mostly dedicated to corn but they were also growing peaches, nectarines, plums, apricots and pears. The goal was to create a bigger, tougher, sweeter plant that wouldn’t be harmed by pesticides or the cold.
The bees started harvesting the nectar to make into honey in the early stages of the plants’ modifications, they were not ready for human consumption. The chemicals meant to enhance the corn contaminated the whole plant, including the nectar. When the worker bees and the queen ate the contaminated honey in the …show more content…
winter, the chemicals from the plants got into their systems. The weaker bees and queens died that winter leaving only the tougher queens to reproduce the next year.
Ten Years Later…
After many years of consuming these chemicals the scientists who were working on the plants, noticed changes in the bees’ behavior.
In his report, biologist John Anderson, bee specialist, wrote: “Africanized honey bees are evolved so that they can survive in conditions with limited resources. The hives of bees currently pollinating the plants in our lab have plenty of nectar to make into honey. The bees seem to getting larger. This is rather disturbing to me because Africanized honey bees are already a very aggressive species of bee, they are nicknamed ‘killer bees.’ Yesterday afternoon I saw something very strange on one of our cameras. One of the worker bees was perched on a peach making strange slashing movements with its front legs. Then it stuck its head straight down into the ‘slashed’ are. When looking at the video from other angles it could be clearly seen that the bee had scooped up the peach flesh in its mandibles. Soon after the bee flew
away.”
More of these types of incidents were recorded by the cameras in the lab. Soon there was a team in the lab dedicated to finding out what the bees were actually doing. The scientists pulled out a hive of bees to do tests on. They tested the bees in many different ways. They were only temporarily knocked out by pesticides that would normally kill insects and they were much more resistant to the cold.
After barely three weeks of studying the bees’ behavior it became clear that they were somehow eating the fruit. The bees would perch on a piece of fruit and slash through its skin with their front legs, using their exoskeleton as a blade. Then they would stick their heads into the exposed fruit flesh and scoop out some of the fruit with their mandibles, they seemed to be keeping the fruit in the pouches where they stored nectar.
The scientists managed to get a look inside the bee hives and saw that in fact when the worker bees returned, they spat out fruit flesh. (Although less than they originally had collected, they were clearly eating some of it.) The fruit was fed to the young worker bees and drones, after they had developed from larvae, in addition to honey. The fruit seemed to function a little bit like the royal jelly the queens ate, it made the bees larger and they also seem to living longer, like the queens.
It also became clear that the bees with sharper forelegs brought in more food and therefore ate more.
Within a few months, bees outside the lab were seen demonstrating similar behavior. Scientist only explanation is that the ‘fruit eating’ Africanized honey bees have escaped from the lab in Arizona.
50 Years Later…
Africanized honey bees have not only developed a taste for fruit, but they have blades on their forelegs. On their front legs, bees have a sharp hook made from their exoskeleton.
Between the Africanized honey bees’ original adaptation to survive with limited resources and their semi-new (in terms of evolution) larger size and fruit eating adaptations it’s no wonder that these bees have survived the best.
Africanized honey bees are already able to survive in unpredictable weather conditions. They are more evolved in this way the other species of honey bee. Africanized bees became more common than regular European honey bees. Since they can breed more quickly they became over populated.
* * *
In a lab in Arizona hundreds of colonies of bees were brought in to pollinate the genetically modified fruits and vegetables while they were being tested. The lab was mostly dedicated to corn but they were also growing peaches, nectarines, plums, apricots and pears. The goal was to create a bigger, tougher, sweeter plant that wouldn’t be harmed by pesticides or the cold.
The bees started harvesting the nectar to make into honey in the early stages of the plants’ modifications, they were not ready for human consumption. The chemicals meant to enhance the corn contaminated the whole plant, including the nectar. When the worker bees and the queen ate the contaminated honey in the …show more content…
winter, the chemicals from the plants got into their systems. The weaker bees and queens died that winter leaving only the tougher queens to reproduce the next year.
Ten Years Later…
After many years of consuming these chemicals the scientists who were working on the plants, noticed changes in the bees’ behavior.
In his report, biologist John Anderson, bee specialist, wrote: “Africanized honey bees are evolved so that they can survive in conditions with limited resources. The hives of bees currently pollinating the plants in our lab have plenty of nectar to make into honey. The bees seem to getting larger. This is rather disturbing to me because Africanized honey bees are already a very aggressive species of bee, they are nicknamed ‘killer bees.’ Yesterday afternoon I saw something very strange on one of our cameras. One of the worker bees was perched on a peach making strange slashing movements with its front legs. Then it stuck its head straight down into the ‘slashed’ are. When looking at the video from other angles it could be clearly seen that the bee had scooped up the peach flesh in its mandibles. Soon after the bee flew
away.”
More of these types of incidents were recorded by the cameras in the lab. Soon there was a team in the lab dedicated to finding out what the bees were actually doing. The scientists pulled out a hive of bees to do tests on. They tested the bees in many different ways. They were only temporarily knocked out by pesticides that would normally kill insects and they were much more resistant to the cold.
After barely three weeks of studying the bees’ behavior it became clear that they were somehow eating the fruit. The bees would perch on a piece of fruit and slash through its skin with their front legs, using their exoskeleton as a blade. Then they would stick their heads into the exposed fruit flesh and scoop out some of the fruit with their mandibles, they seemed to be keeping the fruit in the pouches where they stored nectar.
The scientists managed to get a look inside the bee hives and saw that in fact when the worker bees returned, they spat out fruit flesh. (Although less than they originally had collected, they were clearly eating some of it.) The fruit was fed to the young worker bees and drones, after they had developed from larvae, in addition to honey. The fruit seemed to function a little bit like the royal jelly the queens ate, it made the bees larger and they also seem to living longer, like the queens.
It also became clear that the bees with sharper forelegs brought in more food and therefore ate more.
Within a few months, bees outside the lab were seen demonstrating similar behavior. Scientist only explanation is that the ‘fruit eating’ Africanized honey bees have escaped from the lab in Arizona.
50 Years Later…
Africanized honey bees have not only developed a taste for fruit, but they have blades on their forelegs. On their front legs, bees have a sharp hook made from their exoskeleton.
Between the Africanized honey bees’ original adaptation to survive with limited resources and their semi-new (in terms of evolution) larger size and fruit eating adaptations it’s no wonder that these bees have survived the best.