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Leonard G. (talk | contribs) |
Leonard G. (talk | contribs) m →Honeybees: refine a bit |
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:In the case of the [[honeybee]], one can attribute the usefulness of a worker's single use detachable stinger to well known principles of [[evolution]] considered in the context of the honeybee's social organization, even considering that the delivery of the stinger is fatal to the bee.
:*In the an evolutionary context it is not the survival of the individual worker bee that is important, for these workers do not contribute to the survival of the colony's [[genes]] - these are only done though the queen's ability to produce the male [[drones]] to ultimately breed with virgin queens from other colonies and the worker's ability to produce such queens from eggs laid by that queen, either by supercession (queen replacement), or queen development associated with a resident queen's leading of a [[swarm]] out of the colony.
:*The barbed stinger is advantageous to the survival of the colony, as only a momentary contact, a fraction of a second on a bare part of a [[predator]], (typically the nose or near the eyes) is required - should the predator crush or brush off the attacking worker it will be to no effect as the stinger is embedded, progressing deeper (due to the sawing motion of its twin barbs) and the venom bulb is actively pumping - all this without requiring the presence of the bee. Note that it will be easy for an attacking bee to find the nose as they (as are mosquitos) able to home in on high levels of carbon dioxide.
:*The effectiveness of a mass attack of bees will increase the likelyhood of the survival of the colony, not just by protecting the queen but also by protecting the [[brood]] (the egg, larval and metamorphic forms of the workers), the stored pollen (important for spring build-up of the worker population), the stored honey (important for the survival of the colony over the winter, and the comb - the habitat of the colony, which would be destroyed by a predator to obtain the other valuable portions, and finally, whatever protection is offered by a cavity, in the case of cavity-dwelling bees.
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== barograph pictures ==
hello Leonard ! saw some good pictures of a barograph at french wikipedia pages concerning "barometre". look here: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barom%C3%A8tre
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