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[THEME MUSIC] MARGARITA: Hi, my name is Margarita. I have it down here. I am a Cornell student. And I am a scientist that works with bees. So I have come today to share with you a little bit of what I know about bees. And I'm going to start by telling you a story about how I got interested in bees, how I became a bee scientist.
When I was about your age, I was really, really scared of animals. I didn't like insects at all. I grew up in a city, where I didn't have a lot of contact with nature. So I was really scared of the things that I didn't know. But at school, my favorite subject was always science, and especially biology. So when I decided to go to college, I decided to study biology.
And at that time, I took a class about insects. And for that class, we went to the Amazon Rainforest to see insects in nature. So one day, I was walking with the rest of my colleagues in the forest and suddenly, I see these huge green shiny insect on the ground. So I picked it up, and I didn't know what it was. So I went running to my Professor and asked him what that was. And he told me that that was a bee.
I was so shocked because I always thought that bees were about this big and had all these stripes on their abdomen. And I didn't know that they could have colors like green. So since then, since that day, I have been really interested in bee diversity and all the different kinds of bees that are in the world.
Bees, like any other insect, have three main body parts. They have a head, a thorax, and an abdomen. On the head, they have two antennae, and they have two good compound eyes that they use to actually see images. On the thorax, they have three pairs of legs-- so a total of six legs-- and two pairs of wings. And on the tip of the abdomen, female bees have a stinger.
All female bees actually can sting multiple times, except for the honeybee that loses the stinger every time that they sting. So what are the differences between wasps and bees? There are a few morphological differences. Bees tend to be a lot hairier and chubbier. And wasps are a lot slender, and they have less hair.
There are also differences in their behavior. Bees are less aggressive than wasps. And there are differences in their diet, too. Bees exclusively feed on plant material. So they feed on pollen and nectar from flowers. Instead wasps are carnivores-- they hunt other insects. So if you're out with your family on a sunny day having a picnic and you're eating a turkey sandwich and you have a bug flying around, you probably what is flying around you is a wasp that is after that turkey in your turkey sandwich.
Instead if you're drinking a really, really sweet soda and you have a bug flying around you, that is probably a bee that is going after the sugar in your soda. So we just learned something about bee morphology and the differences between wasps and bees. So now I want you to take a look at this box of insects and tell me what they are.
So the first one is a bee. It's a honeybee. So it has a lot of hairs, and it has four wings. The second one is a wasp. It doesn't have hair, but it has four wings. The third one is a fly, because it only has two wings. The fourth one is very easy-- it's a bumble bee. It is very chubby and hairy. So that's a bee too. Number 5 is another fly that has two wings only. And number 6 is a tiny bee. It's a lot smaller than a bumble bee that is also a bee and has four wings and a lot of hair.
So another difference between flies and bees is that bees have chewing mouthparts, and flies have sucking mouthparts. So bees come in different sizes and colors. I want you to take a look at this box that is showing you a lot of the diversity of bees. Down here, we have a honeybee. That is the most common bee around this area. But all of these insects are also bees. You can see that there is different size. This can be as large as this carpenter bee or as small as this sweat bee.
And they come also in very different colors. So they can have patterns, striped patterns like these ones, or they can come in different colors like red here, purple, blue, and even green.
[BUZZING]
So here is another interesting fact about bees. 90% of the 20,000 species of bees worldwide are actually solitary. That means that they don't live in big groups like the honeybee-- that is a social species. So in the spring, adult females come out, and they start foraging for pollen and nectar in flowers. And they bring all of that food underground into their nest. They form a pollen ball, and they lay an egg on top of the pollen ball. And that egg starts feeding on that and then it develops into an adult.
So they try to get pollen from the flowers. And what happens is that when they visit the flowers, they collect pollen in one flower and then they fly to another flower and they also collect pollen in that flower. And they repeat that process several times. And so what happens when they are doing that is that they transfer pollen from one flower to the other. And that is a process called pollination. Have you ever heard that word before?
Well, so pollination is the process of transferring pollen from one flower to another flower. And after that happens, the bees help plants reproduce. And so what happens is that flowers end up producing fruits.
And I need a volunteer. Who would like to come? In front, yes, do you want to come here?
SPEAKER 1: I do.
MARGARITA: So this is a flower. This is going to represent a flower that has pollen inside, OK? And we're going to try different structures to collect this pollen that is inside the flower. So she's going to use these wire to try to collect the pollen inside the flower. OK. OK, show it to them. Did you collect a lot of pollen? No, right? Can you see? There is a tiny, tiny bit of powder, pollen powder in that water.
SPEAKER 1: Oh, I'm sorry.
MARGARITA: Yeah. OK.
SPEAKER 3: It's funny.
SPEAKER 1: [INAUDIBLE]
MARGARITA: OK. Now we are going to use a structure that has more layers, OK? And she's going to try to collect the pollen inside the flower.
SPEAKER 2: It's going to get more.
MARGARITA: Yeah, OK. OK, do you see?
SPEAKER 2: Yes, that side has more pollen.
MARGARITA: There's a lot more pollen. So bees can actually collect much more pollen if they have hair. OK. And then this last structure has even more hairs, OK? And we're going to see what happens. OK, so she's getting much more pollen. So the hairs, the hairs are the structures that really help bees to collect the pollen from the flowers. Is this clear?
SPEAKER 2: I'm going to put a little hair on the legs.
MARGARITA: [LAUGHS] OK. Great. OK, so let's summarize what we have talked about today. We learned that bees are very diverse. There are about 20,000 species of bees worldwide, 3,500 species of bees in the US, and 450 species in New York State. We also learned that bees come in different sizes and different colors. Bees can be as minute as a pinhead, but they can be as large as six inches long.
But most importantly, what I want you to remember is that bees have a very important ecological role. They are the most important pollinators of plants, and they pollinate 35% of our food. Imagine a world without bees. We wouldn't be able to eat cherries. We wouldn't be able to eat apples. Coffee, a lot of the vegetables that we eat wouldn't be available for us.
So what you can do to help conserve bees is to have several flowering plants in your garden that can provide food for bees. That means that can provide nectar and pollen for them. And if you can help feeding them, you're helping conserving them.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
There's more to the world of bees than just the Bumble Bee! Margarita explains why she became interested in bees and their global diversity and behavior - versus a wasp - to a local classroom.
