An Encyclopedia of Incredible Animals by Macey Karen

Author:Macey, Karen [Macey, Karen]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2013-07-11T04:00:00+00:00

5

LOOKING OUT FOR THE NEXT GENERATION

BEE WOLF

Bee Wolf—A female bee wolf carrying a honeybee at the entrance to her elaborate nest. (Mike Shanahan)

Scientific name: Philanthus triangulum Scientific classification:

Phylum: Arthropoda

Class: Insecta

Order: Hymenoptera

Family: Sphecidae

What does it look like? Superficially, the bee wolf resembles a common wasp as it has the same color pattern (black and yellow) and is approximately the same size.

Where does it live? The bee wolf is found in habitats with sparse, short vegetation where the soil is sufficiently sandy to allow digging. The climate is also a crucial prerequisite as

Bee Wolf—An exceptional, close-up image of an adult female bee wolf. (Roger Key)

bee wolves need comparatively dry summers and occur mostly in places with less than 700 mm rain per year. This insect is distributed from Spain in the west to Afghanistan in the east, and from Norway in the north to South Africa in the south. This is about the same distribution as their prey, the (western) honeybee.

The Lengths a Mother Will Go To

Many of the bees and wasps go to great lengths to make sure their young have the best possible start in life. The bee wolf is a perfect example of this as the female goes to great lengths to provision her nest with food for the next generation. The adult female feeds on nectar and pollen to provide her with the energy needed for flight, but to provide for her young, she must stalk and capture unfortunate honeybees. Her prey is often distracted gathering nectar and pollen from flowers, and upon sighting suitable quarry, she flies straight toward the honeybee and knocks it from its flower. On the way toward the ground, the bee wolf stings the honeybee in the weak membrane joining the plates of its thorax, injecting a paralyzing venom. While the honeybee is tangled in the vegetation or wrestling on the ground, the venom acts quickly, and when the prey is safely immobilized, the bee wolf grabs it with her middle legs and takes off back to her nest.

The nest of the bee wolf is a lavish affair. The subterranean lair is dug in sandy soil by the female using her front legs and mandibles. The tunnel can be as much as 1 m long, a considerable distance for an animal that is no more than 16 mm in length. The first part of the tunnel slopes downward at an angle of 30°, after which there is a long horizontal section. Up to 34 lateral tunnels ending in a brood chamber are excavated horizontally on each side of the main tunnel. The female bee wolf stocks each brood chamber with one to six paralyzed honeybees and a single egg that hatches into a hungry larva. The bees are smeared with a secretion from glands on the female’s head, and only recently has the reason for this behavior been discovered. The nest of the bee wolf is warm and humid—a great place for the growth of fungi and bacteria—and without some means of preservation, the larva of the bee wolf would be left with little more than a mound of rotting insects.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.