6. Bees and Mosquitoes

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Could you tell someone the way to the grocery store by dancing?

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Bees dance to show other bees where food is

The dances even tell how far away the food is

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Bees find food inside flowers

Bees are useful insects because they make honey that people use as food

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They also make wax which is used to make candles and other products

Honeybees live in a nest called a hive

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Vocabulary:

honeybees

A kind of bee that makes honey and wax that people use

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Vocabulary:

hive

A nest made by honeybees

A hive has many rooms with 6 sides

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The rooms are made of wax and called a comb

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Vocabulary:

comb

A group of rooms in a beehive

Each hive has a queen which is the largest bee

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She mates with the male bees, called drones, then lays eggs for the

rest of her life

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Vocabulary:

drones

A male bee that mates with the queen bee

Most of the bees in a hive are workers that do most of the jobs

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They build the hive and look for food

When they find flowers, they dance to show others where the food is

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Then many workers fly to the flowers to feed

They collect nectar and pollen from the flowers

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Vocabulary:

pollen

A yellow powder that is made in a flower and helps with pollination of the flower

The nectar turns to honey in the stomach of a bee

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The workers store the honey and pollen in the combs

This is food for young bees, the queen, and the drones

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As they feed, bees carry pollen from one flower to another

Pollen helps flowers make seeds which is another way in which bees

are useful

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Honeybee Movie

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Something bites your arm and a bump starts to grow

It itches and is painful. What insect did that?

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Probably a mosquito

There are more than 3,000 kinds of mosquitoes

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Most mosquitoes are about ¼ inch long

They each have 1 pair of wings

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Most mosquitoes lay their eggs on water

The eggs float and hatch into larvae

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Vocabulary:

larvae

The wormlike stages of life of some invertebrates

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When the larvae grow, their skin comes off

Then mosquitoes with wings fly out

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To find a female, the male uses its antennae to pick up the sound of the

female’s wings

After they mate, the male dies!

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Only female mosquitoes bite

The female needs to feed on blood to make eggs

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Some kinds of mosquitoes feed only on frogs or snakes

Others feed on cows, horses, and people