David
Clearing the weeds
Posts: 49
Allotment site: America Lane
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Post by David on Sept 5, 2021 15:01:19 GMT
There are over 240 species of bees in the UK
• Only 1 honeybee species: They produce honey and live-in hives of up to 20,000 individuals.
• 25 bumblebee species: Are social insects which nest in colonies; underground in old mammal nests or in dense vegetation, compost heaps or in old bird nests.
• 224 species of solitary bees: and they come in many colours, shapes and sizes
• Did you know that tomatoes: need large, bodied bumblebees to buzz-pollinate them by vibrating the flowers to release the pollen?
• Red mason bees: These are solitary bees that nest in a range of natural holes, using mud to seal off each egg chamber. They pollinate fruit trees.
• Leaf cutter bees: Leaf cutters are also solitary bees. They cut discs out of leaves to build the 'cells' in which their larvae live. They also pollinate fruit and vegetables.
David
Plot 18
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David
Clearing the weeds
Posts: 49
Allotment site: America Lane
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Post by David on Sept 5, 2021 17:13:53 GMT
Turn your patch into a pollinator paradise!
Did you know: Bees and other pollinators are vital to growing many of our favourite produce and provide us with every third mouthful of food that we eat
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wil
Clearing the weeds
Posts: 18
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Post by wil on Sept 6, 2021 16:08:11 GMT
Sorry David
I will bow to your superior knowledge on bees
but you are wrong when you say that tomatoes need
bees to touch pollenate them.
In fact outdoor tomatoes are pollenated by the wind
Indoor ones i used to use a kiddies paint brush to
just touch them with.
Now of course most of the modern varities are self
pollenating.
One thing you could tell me .
Is it true that a bees flight is against all the
known knowledge of aero dynamics.
I was watching a programme on tele many moons ago
and the presenter stated this as a fact.
Always had a soft spot for bees.
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David
Clearing the weeds
Posts: 49
Allotment site: America Lane
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Post by David on Sept 6, 2021 16:29:42 GMT
"According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way that a bee should be able to fly. • Its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground. • The bee, of course, flies anyways. • Because “bees don't care what humans think is impossible." The myth dates back to the 1930s, when the French entomologist August Magnan noted that a bee's flight should be impossible, because of the haphazard way their wings flapped around. And if bees flew like aeroplanes, he would have been correct.But a Oxford observations shows that: instead of the aerodynamic finesse found in most other insects, bumblebees have a adopted a brute force approach powered by a huge thorax and fuelled by energy-rich nectar. "This approach may be due to its particularly wide body shape, or it could have evolved to make bumblebees more manoeuvrable in the air at the cost of a less efficient flying style."
- A bumblebee is a tanker-truck, its job is to transport nectar and pollen back to the hive.
Efficiency is unlikely to be important for that way of life.
- The Oxford team trained bumblebees to commute from their hive to harvest pollen from cut flowers at one end of a wind tunnel.
- They then used the wind tunnel to blow streams of smoke passed the flying bees, to reveal vortices in the air, and recorded the results with high-speed cameras taking up to 2000 images per second.
- From these images the team were able to visualise the airflow over flapping bumblebee wings.
- The old myth that "bumblebees shouldn’t be able to fly" was based on calculations using the aerodynamic theory of 1918-19, just 15 years after the Wright brothers made the first powered flight.
These early theories suggested that bumblebee wings were too small to create sufficient lift but since then scientists have made huge advances in understanding aerodynamics and how different kinds of airflow can generate lift
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