What kind of mouthparts do bees have

The openings of these hollow tubes are called spiracles. The tubes are called trachea which then provide oxygen and gas exchange to all tissues in the body. Contains the proventriculus, ventriculus, and small intestine. This is where most of the digestion and nutrient absorption occurs in the insect body. A short tube connecting the midgut to the hindgut. The Ileum also often houses microbes, which aid in digestion. A set of small tubes that are used to absorb water, waste, and salts and other solutes from body fluid, and remove them from the body.

The rectum acts like our large intestine and is the bees primary location of water absorption for the gut after digestion and nutrient absorption. Also called "sting" is used to puncture the skin and pump venom into the wound.

In worker bees the stinger has a barbed end. Once pushed into the skin the stinger remains in the victim. The venom sac will remain with the stinger. If left in the body the stinger will continue to pump venom from the venom sac into the victim.

Queen bees have a longer and un-barbed stinger. Drones males do not have a stinger. The sting is hollow, allowing venom to pass through the stinger. This is also the canal via which an egg is passed, when the queen lays an egg. Holds the venom produced by the venom gland, and can then contract to pump venom through the stinger.

Worker bees start to secrete wax about 12 days after emerging. About six days later the gland degenerates and that bee will no longer produce wax. The queen is continually laying eggs to maintain colony size and to produce more new workers that produce wax. Like the nerve cord in our spine, which holds bundles of nerve fibers that sends signals from our brain to the rest of our body.

A constricted portion of the honey bee foregut or honey stomach, which can control the flow of nectar and solids. This allows honey bees to store nectar in the honey stomach without being digested. A storage sac, used in honey bees to carry nectar. The honey stomach is hardened to prevent fluids from entering the body at this location. Same as This is a large bundle of nerves from the brain that sends signals to the rest of the bee's body.

In bees a tongue-like appendage used to help drink up nectar. Like our tongue bees can taste with this organ. The brain has a large area for receiving inputs from the two compound eyes, called optic lobes. The next largest input are from the antenna antenna lobes. This area is known to be involved in olfactory learning and short term memory formation, and recently shown to be also important in long term memory formation in insects.

There are also endocrine organs attached to the nerve cords, very close to the esophagus the food canal. One is called the corpora allata CA, in Latin it means the body beside the food canal , which is the only source of one important hormone, juvenile hormone, which is involved in both the queen-worker differentiation, and also division of labor in workers.

The other one is called corpora cardiaca CC, the body near the heart , which is a neurohemal organ and stores and releases another hormone PTTH, prothoracicotropic hormone.

PTTH can stimulate the production of ecdysteroids, by a gland located in the thorax, the prothoracic gland. Lastly there are exocrine glands inside the head also, most notably the mandibular glands, the hypopharyngeal glands and the salivary glands. Mandibular gland is a simple sac-like structure attached to each of the mandibles.

In the queen this is the source of the powerful queen pheromone. In young workers the gland produces a lipid-rich white substance that is mixed with the secretion of hypopharyngeal glands to make royal jelly or worker jelly and fed to the queen or other workers. In old workers foragers the gland also produces heptanone, a component of the alarm pheromone.

Similarly hypopharyngeal glands produce protein-rich secretions when young nurses , but produce invertase an enzyme to break down sucrose into fructose and glucose in foragers. The glands is consisted of a central duct which is coiled between the front cuticle and the brain with thousands of tiny grape-like spheres acini, singular: acinus.

The secretion flows to the mouth through the long duct. The glands are large in size hypertrophied in nurse bees but become generated in foragers. There is also a pair of head salivary glands inside the head. The glands produce saliva which is mixed with wax scales to change the physical property of wax.

I am doing honeybee studies and need to dissect out the hypopharyngeal glands, salivary glands, and if possible the corporum allatum.

Its size varies among species and it helps to contain the food. The posterior surface is known as epipharynx. A pair of jaws for crushing or grinding the food. They operate from side to side. A pair of appendages which are divided in three parts: cardo , which articulates with the head; stipes , which supports a sensory palp; galea and lacinia , which act as fork and spoon to manipulate the food.

A little process located behind mandibles and between maxillae that helps mix food and saliva. Unlike mandibles and maxillae, the two original appendages forming the labium have fused together along the middle. The labium is also subdivided in two parts: postmentum , pieces which articulate with the head; prementum , distal pieces which support a pair of sensory palps and divide apically forming four lobes: glossae and paraglossae.

Evolutionary adaptations of mouthparts How did they evolve? Both maxillary and labial palps are absent in these organisms, and labium forms a duct that encloses 4 stylets: two maxillary stylets and two mandibular stylets. Maxillary stylets delimit a salivary duct and a food duct, and together with mandibular ones allows the organism to pierce different tissues and then soak up their liquids: sap in phytophagous forms and blood in predatory ones. Mosquitoes : their mouthparts are very similar to the ones of bugs; however, they possess one more stylet, corresponding to the hypopharynx, which contains the salivary duct through which they inject different substances to their hosts, such as anticoagulants.

Labrum and hypopharynx together form the food duct, and labium has only an assistant function of supporting the stylets. Phthiraptera and Siphonaptera lice and fleas : their mouthparts are formed by the epipharynx, both labial palps and both laciniae of maxillae. Maxillary palps are well developed and are always situated before the rest of the structure. Lice and fleas use their mouthparts to parasite their hosts, piercing their tissues and then sucking their blood.

Thysanoptera thrips : these tiny insects usually appear as pests in agricultural crops, sometimes even being vectors of different plant viruses. Their mouthparts present right-left asymmetry and the piercing structure is formed by the labium, the labrum and maxillae.

Delimited by all these structures, there are also two maxillary stylets and only one mandibular stylet the other one become atrophied. Thrips scratch the plant surface and then pierce it by their stylets, through which they suck plant fluids.

Blanke, A. Structural mouthpart interaction evolved already in the earliest lineages of insects. In Proc. B Vol. The Royal Society.