1. Habit, Habitat, Description,
Biology and Distribution of
Hymenoptera Insects
Dinesh Dalvaniya
Dept: Agricultural
Entomology
Mob No:09574031169
Email Id:
dineshdalvaniya@ymail.co
m

2. Habit & Habitat:
colony, most of the 60,000 bees are female led by a single queen. Physically
larger than the other bees, the queen lays up to 1,500 eggs in one day and as
many as one million eggs in her relatively short life span of one to five years.
She can defend herself, but otherwise is reliant on the colony to house, feed,
and clean her and her brood . Worker bees make up the largest population in
the colony, and their moniker is well-earned. All females, these busy bees build
and maintain the nest, construct the hexagonal cells of the comb by secreting
wax from glands in their abdomens, care for the brood laid by the queen,
defend the colony, and are responsible for venturing from the nest to gather
pollen, nectar, and water. Drones, the only male honey bees, are unable to
defend or feed themselves and exist only to mate with the queen and die.

3. Honey Bee (Apis mellifera)
The honey bee, Apis mellifera, is one of several species of
bees that produce honey. Honey bees live in colonies, or
hives, of 50,000 bees on average. A honey bee colony
consists of a queen, drones, and workers. All play roles in
the survival of the community.
Classification:
Kingdom – Animal
Phylum – Arthropoda
Class - Insecta
Order – Hymenoptera
Family – Apidae
Genus – Apis
Species – mellifera

4. ► Habitat:
► Honey bees require an ample supply of flowers in their
habitat, since this is their food source. They also need
suitable places to build hives. In cooler temperate
climates, the hive site must be large enough for the bees
and for storage of honey to feed on during the winter
Researchers believe that the original habitats of the
honey bee are tropical climates and heavily forested
areas. Honey bees can thrive in natural or domesticated
environments, though they prefer to live in gardens,
woodlands, orchards, meadows and other areas where
flowering plants are abundant. Within their natural
habitat, honey bees build nests inside tree cavities and
under edges if objects to hide themselves from
predators.

5. ► Many people believe that honey bees originated in
Africa and spread to Northern Europe, Eastern India,
China and the Americas. However, because honey bees
have been domesticated to produce honey for human
consumption, they are now found all over the world in
different habitats.
► Honey bees in temperate climates, such as European
honey bees, store larger amounts of honey than other
subspecies, as they need to maintain a certain
temperature inside the nest to survive during winter.
Bees living in these climates adapt well to their
environment only when workers have created a large
nest with well-insulated interiors. To collect enough
honey for the next winter, foragers swarm early in the
spring.

6. ► Because honey bees in tropical habitats, such as African honey
bees, do not experience long weeks of cold weather, they do not
need to build large and well-insulated nests, produce thousands
of workers or store large amounts of honey. For a honey bee in a
tropical habitat, swarming depends largely on the abundance of
food sources, rather than seasonal factors. However, regardless
of living in tropical or temperate climates, honey bees maintain
their hives with a constant temperature of 90 to 95 degrees
Fahrenheit.
► During winter, honey bees consume honey and use their
metabolic heat to provide warmth to all individuals of a colony.
On the contrary, honey bees use the liquid from stored nectar as
an evaporative coolant during warmer seasons. These methods
ensure that seasonal changes do not affect their interior habitats.

7. Description:
► As many as 29 subspecies of Apis mellifera exist. The
Italian honey bee, Apis mellifera ligustica, is most often
kept by beekeepers in the western hemisphere. Italian
honey bees are described as light or golden in color.
Their abdomens are striped yellow and brown. Hairy
heads make their large compound eyes appear ringed
with hair. The honey bee is about 12 mm (1/2 inch) long
and usually yellow, with 3 or 5 dark brown abdominal
bands. They carry two pairs of wings and lack the
constricted abdomen (wasp waist) of the wasp and
hornet. Honey bees can sting, but are much less
aggressive than wasps and hornets. Honey bees are
somewhat variable in color but are some shade of
black, brown or brown intermixed with yellow.

8. ► They have dense hairs on the pronotum and sparser hair on the
abdomen. Microscopically, at least some of the body hairs of
bees (Apoidea) are branched (pumose). The abdomen often
appears banded. Larvae are legless grubs, white in color.
► Honey bees are the only bee in the genus Apis in Texas. Honey
bees have several varieties or races and have been bred for honey
production, temperament and resistance to disease. These
varieties may be recognized to some extent by color and size.
However, cross breeding may take place in the wild, so queens
from commercial breeders should always be purchased to re-
queen colonies. Africanized honey bees or "killer bees" can not
easily be differentiated from commercial varieties and require
measuring several bees from a colony and comparing
measurements. There are several other bees including
bumblebees and leaf cutting bees that also collect pollen and
nectar. There is a species of stingless wasp that occurs in South
Texas that produces honey much like bees.

9. Biology
► Honey bees undergo complete metamorphosis:
► Egg – The queen bee lays the eggs. She is mother to all or nearly
all members of the colony.
Larva – The worker bees care for the larvae, feeding and
cleaning them.
Pupa – After molting several times, the larvae will cocoon inside
the cells of the hive.
Adult – Male adults are always drones; females may be workers
or queens. For the first 3 to 10 days of their adult lives, all
females are nurses that care for the young.
Stages of development of the dronepupae.

10. ► Each egg is laid in one of the hexagonal wax cells and hatches
into a tiny, white, legless larva. The larva feeds on substances
deposited in the cell by the workers; it grows, pupates in the cell,
hatches as an adult bee and finally emerges from the cell into the
hive. The eggs hatch after three to four days and by nine days are
fully grown and ready to pupate. The workers put a capping over
the cells at this time. Ten or eleven days later the capping is
bitten away and the adult emerges. The times given above vary
with changes of temperature and according to whether the bee is
becoming a drone, worker or queen.
► Drones. The drones, who live for about four to five weeks and
do not work inside the hive, are fed by the workers or help
themselves from the store of pollen and nectar in the combs.
Their function is to fertilize a new queen. In the autumn, or when
conditions are poor, they are turned out of the hive where, unable
to find food for themselves, they soon die.

11. ► Workers. The workers are female bees whose reproductive
organs do not function. Among many other tasks they collect
food from outside the hive and store it, make the wax cells
and feed the developing larvae.
► Colony life
► Unlike a bumble bee colony or a paper wasp colony, the life of a
honey bee colony isperennial. There are three castes of honey
bees: queens, which produce eggs; dronesor males, which mate
with new queens and have no stinger; and workers, which are all
non-reproducing females. The queen lays eggs singly in cells of
the comb. Larvaehatch from eggs in three to four days. They are
then fed by worker bees and develop through several stages in
the cells. Cells are capped by worker bees when the larvapupates.
Queens and drones are larger than workers and so require larger
cells to develop. A colony may typically consist of tens of
thousands of individuals.

12. ► While some colonies live in hives provided by humans,
so-called "wild" colonies (although all honey bees
remain wild, even when cultivated and managed by
humans) typically prefer a nest site that is clean, dry,
protected from the weather, about 20 liters in volume
with a 4 to 6 cm² entrance about 3 m above the ground,
and preferably facing south or south-east (in the
northern hemisphere) or north or north-east (in the
southern hemisphere).
Honey bee swarm pitched on a high limb

13. ►A typical small hive contains perhaps 20,000
bees and these are divided into three types:
Queen, Drone, and Worker. The chart below
compares these types:

14. Distribution of honey bees
Bees and flowering plants have evolved during a period of 130 million years
to become increasingly dependent upon one another. Today there are
20,000-30,000 species of bees of which around 16,000 have been
scientifically described. Ancestors of honey bees emerged 40 million years
ago, with a modern type of open nesting species appearing in south east Asia
around 10 million years ago. Subsequently species that nested inside cavities
appeared, eventually spreading throughout tropical and temperate Asia and
into Europe. These European bees became isolated from the Asian species as
desert developed in the Middle East, and evolved into the species that we
know today as Apis mellifera, with an indigenous distribution stretching from
the Arctic Circle to South Africa, and with eastern limits of the Ural
Mountains in the north and the central deserts of Afghanistan in the south.
The cavity-nesting bees in Asia evolved into Apis cerana and the several other
cavity nesting species of Apis known today. The open nesting species gave
rise to the several types of open nesting species existing today. Thus, Asia
has a diversity of Apis species, while Europe and Africa have just one
species.

15. Ants:
► Habits
► Ants typically make their nests in or on the ground. The soil
excavated to make the nest may be piled up around the opening
to the nest, forming a mound or crater. The nest is typically
composed of several long tunnels that lead to chambers. The
chambers serve as storage areas for food and as nurseries for the
young.
► Some ants live in the wood of trees or rotten logs. The workers
of one tree-dwelling species make nests by weaving leaves
together with silky threads secreted by their larvae. Some ants
have well-defined territories and build permanent nests. Others
move from one site to another, building a new nest each time.
Some ants share their nests with ants of a different species and
sometimes with other kinds of insects, or with spiders. A number
of ants make their nests in human dwellings, particularly in wood
siding or in the foundation

16. ► Food
► Some species of ants eat live insects while others feed only on
decaying animal matter. Others cultivate and eat fungi. Some
ants gather seeds and grain for food. Several ant species tend
"herds" of aphids and scale insects to obtain the sugary liquid,
called honeydew, that they excrete.
► What Else Do Ants Eat?
► Ants eat fruit, flowers, and seeds, while others eat everything in
their path, including small animals.
► Ants have special mouthparts for grabbing and eating food. First
come the mandibles, which are jaws that move from side to side.
Ants use their mandibles to hold food, carry their young, and
fight enemies. Behind the mandibles are the maxillae (mak SIHL
ee), which are used for chewing. But ants do not swallow the
food right away. First the food passes to a pouch behind the
mouth. There, the liquid is squeezed out of the food. Ants
swallow the liquid and spit out the leftover food pellet.

17. ► Ants have two kinds of stomachs—a stomach and a
crop. Food an ant eats for itself goes to the stomach.
Food it shares with others is stored in the crop. The ant
spits up this food to feed other ants and larvae. Hungry
ants may stroke each other or tap antennae to ask for
food.
► Habitat
Most ant species live in the soil. Some, like the
carpenter ants, also live in wood (they excavate, but do
not actually eat the wood). Some ants live in cavities
made inside plants, such as acorns, twigs, and galls.

18. Description
► Body
► Ants vary in length from about 1/16 inch (1.6 mm) to nearly 2 inches (5 cm).
Most species are red, black, brown, or yellow, and some are green or metallic
blue. Ants, like other insects, have six legs. Their bodies are divided into three
distinct segments: head, thorax, and abdomen. Unlike other insects, ants have
elbowed (rather than straight or curved) antennae (feelers), and a pedicel, a
narrow waistlike indentation between the thorax and abdomen. The crop, an
organ located in the abdomen, is used to store food, which can later be
regurgitated to feed other members of the colony.
► Most ants are smooth-bodied, although some have spiny projections. Ants
have strong jaws called mandibles, which are adapted for killing, crushing,
chewing, cutting, or tearing, depending on the species and what it eats. Some
species of ants have glands that produce formic acid, a strong acid that can be
squirted on enemies, causing a burn or sting. Many ants have stingers that
contain poison, and some, such as the harvester ants and fire ants, can inflict
painful and, occasionally, fatal stings on humans and other animals.

19. ► Why Do Ants Have Tiny Waists?
► Ants have tiny waists so they can wriggle their end parts freely!
An ant’s waist has one or two movable parts. These parts allow
the ant to twist and turn in different ways—an important feature
for moving about an ant colony.
► Ants have three main body parts: the head, the trunk, and the
metasoma (meht uh SOH muh). The ant’s eyes, antennae, and
mandibles (MAN duh buhlz) are located on its head.
► Attached to the trunk are six legs with segments. Each leg has
two claws at the foot. The claws hook into dirt, tree bark, or
leaves, so ants can quickly walk, climb, and dig! Ants are strong,
too. Many ants can lift 50 times their body weight!
► The metasoma has two parts. They are the waist and the gaster.
Organs for digesting, getting rid of waste, and reproducing are in
the gaster. Some ant species have a sting at the end of the gaster
to defend against other insects.

20. ► Where Do Ants Live?
► There are about 10,000 species of ants. So it is not surprising that ants, like
millions of other social insects, live everywhere on land, except where it is
really cold. In fact, areas with warm and moist climates have the most types of
ants and other insects.
► Tropical rain forests are very rich in insect life. If all the animals in the
Amazon rain forest were weighed, many scientists think ants and termites
would make up one-third of that weight.
► Ants are successful survivors. They have different ways of life that allow
them to live in different habitats. And their small size makes it easy for them
to find food and shelter.
► Senses
► The ant's most highly developed sense is that of smell. Ants have abdominal
glands that secrete a variety of pheromones, chemical substances that cause
specific reactions by other individuals. Pheromones act as alarms, sex
attractants, and trail markers; and they help individuals recognize each other.
Ants have a well-developed sense of taste, and can distinguish sour, sweet,
bitter, and salty tastes. Their sense of touch is keen. Touch, or tactile,
receptors are located on the feet and on hairs on the legs. The antennae are
used for smelling, tasting, and touching.
► Some species of ants have compound eyes and well-developed vision, while
others have simple eyes that can only distinguish between light and dark.
Some species of ants are blind.

21. Ant biology and life cycle
► Ants are social insects that live in colonies that may
include thousands of individuals. Ants, along with bees
and wasps, are members of the order Hymenoptera and
undergo complete metamorphosis passing through four
stages:
► Egg
► Larva
► Pupa
► Adult
► The wingless worker ants are the most common adults
seen. However, there are three types of adults:
► Queens
► Males
► Workers

22. Biology and life cycle—Queens
Characteristics and duties of queen ants Largest individuals
in colony Are the only females that reproduce Locate nest
site Lay eggs Assist workers in feeding and grooming
larvae Some ant species have only one queen per colony;
others such as Argentine ants may have several

23. ► Biology and life cycle—Males
► Characteristics and duties of male ants
► Do not participate in colony activities
► Mate with queens
► Die usually within 2 weeks of mating

24. ► Biology and life cycle—Workers
► Characteristics and duties of workers
► Sterile females
► Most numerous caste
► Some species such as carpenter ants and fire ants are
polymorphic, having several sizes of workers; the larger workers,
or major workers, have different job duties than the smaller ones,
or minor workers.
► Ants such as the Argentine ants only have one size of worker and
divide job duties by age; older workers gather food and younger
workers relay and store food, build tunnels, defend the colony;
and feed, groom, transport, and protect larvae.

25. Distribution:
► Many ant genera are found only in rainforests in the warm, high
rainfall areas along the northern and eastern coasts. In fact, about
23 of the 101 Australian genera are limited to coastal Queensland
and north-eastern New South Wales (see locations map at
bottom). If we add to these rainforest habitats the higher rainfall
forests and Mediterranean climate regions of southern New
South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, southern South Australia and
south-western Western Australia, the number of genera limited to
these regions grows to about 50, or nearly half of all known
Australian genera. Additionally, more ant genera have been
found at certain Queensland rainforest sites than any other
Australia site of comparable size, with up to 76 genera being
recorded. In contrast to this, the dry arid zone of central Australia
is occupied by only about 25 genera. None of these genera are
limited to the arid zone as all occur in higher rainfall areas nearer
the coasts. It is also worth noting that no genera are restricted to
Western Australia or Tasmania.

26. Wasps
► Nesting habits
► The type of nest produced by wasps can depend on the
species and location. Many social wasps produce nests
that are constructed predominantly from paper pulp.
The kind of timber used varies from one species to
another and this is what can give many species a nest of
distinctive colour. Social Wasps also use other types of
nesting material that become mixed in with the nest and
it is common to find nests located near to plastic pool or
trampoline covers incorporating distinct bands of colour
that reflect the inclusion of these materials that have
simply been chewed up and mixed with wood fibres to
give a unique look to the nest.

27. ► Again each species of social wasp appears to favour its
own specific range of nesting sites.D. media and D.
sylvestris prefer to nest in trees and shrubs, others
like V. germanica like to nest in cavities that include
holes in the ground, spaces under homes, wall cavities
or in lofts. By contrast solitary wasps are generally
parasitic or predatory and only the latter build nests at
all. Unlike honey bees, wasps have no wax producing
glands. Many instead create a paper-like substance
primarily from wood pulp. Wood fibers are gathered
locally from weathered wood, softened by chewing and
mixing with saliva. The pulp is then used to make
combs with cells for brood rearing. More commonly,
nests are simply burrows excavated in a substrate
(usually the soil, but also plant stems), or, if
constructed, they are constructed from mud.

28. ► Solitary wasps
► The nesting habits of solitary wasps are more diverse
than those of social wasps. Mud daubers andpollen
wasps construct mud cells in sheltered places typically
on the side of walls. Potter waspssimilarly build vase-
like nests from mud, often with multiple cells, attached
to the twigs of trees or against walls. Most other
predatory wasps burrow into soil or into plant stems,
and a few do not build nests at all and prefer naturally
occurring cavities, such as small holes in wood. A
single egg is laid in each cell, which is sealed thereafter,
so there is no interaction between the larvae and the
adults, unlike in social wasps. In some species, male
eggs are selectively placed on smaller prey, leading to
males being generally smaller than females

29. ► Social wasps
► The nests of some social wasps, such as hornets, are first constructed by the
queen and reach about the size of a walnut before sterile female workers take
over construction. The queen initially starts the nest by making a single layer
or canopy and working outwards until she reaches the edges of the cavity.
Beneath the canopy she constructs a stalk to which she can attach several
cells; these cells are where the first eggs will be laid. The queen then
continues to work outwards to the edges of the cavity after which she adds
another tier. This process is repeated, each time adding a new tier until
eventually enough female workers have been born and matured to take over
construction of the nest leaving the queen to focus on reproduction. For this
reason, the size of a nest is generally a good indicator of approximately how
many female workers there are in the colony and some hornets' nests
eventually grow to the size of beach balls. Social wasp colonies often have
populations of between three and ten thousand female workers at maturity,
although a small proportion of nests are seen on a regular basis that are over
three feet across and potentially contain upwards of twenty thousand workers
and at least one queen. What has also been seen are nests close to one another
at the beginning of the year growing quickly and merging with one another to
create nests with tens of thousands of workers.Polistes Some related types of
paper wasp do not construct their nests in tiers but rather in flat single combs.

30. Dolichovespula nest on maple
wasp nests tree, photographed near Maple
Lake

31. The Habitat of Wasps
► Regions
► Almost ever region of the world has
wasps, with more than 200,000
species of the insect and its relatives
having been discovered around the
world. There are at least 4,000 types
of wasps in the United States alone.
Wasps can survive in almost any
terrain, with the exception of polar
regions. Rainforests, wetlands,
deserts, marshes, dunes and forests
are just a few of the terrains where
wasps had built nests.

32. ► Nests
► Wasps build their nests in a variety of ways; however, unlike bees that use
wax, wasps typically make their nests from paper. When building a nest, the
colony workers collect paper and wood fibers in their mouths, including
pieces of weathered fences, telephone poles and cardboard boxes. After
mixing the fibers with saliva, the wasps use the paste to construct the nest.
The fibers harden and create a durable paper home. Some wasp species, such
as the European hornet, build nests in hollowed trees or a home's attic. Others,
like the bald-faced hornet, construct hanging nests from trees and vegetation.
► Inside Nests
 Each wasp nest can hold thousands of the insects. Most wasp habitats can
house from 11,000 to 13,000 workers. They use these nests for breeding
and raising offspring. Depending on the species of wasp, some female
worker wasps will lay eggs and produce larva, while other species'
females don't reproduce. They only care for the queen's offspring.
Because wasps hunt live creatures, including flies, spiders and caterpillars,
they do not store food in the nest, to avoid spoiling.

33. ► Longevity of Nests
 Most wasp colonies are short-lived compared to
other animals, with most surviving only one year.
During the winter, almost all of a nest's worker
wasps will die. The queen wasp will abandon the
nest and find a warm place to hibernate through the
winter, such as an empty log. When the weather
warms, the queen will establish a new colony and
nest somewhere else. Rarely do wasps return to their
nest from the year past.

34. Description
► Wasps are probably the most familiar and
generally disliked of all British Insects. Their
bodies bear the characteristic black and yellow
bands and have a narrow waist in the middle of
the body. They vary in size from the worker
which is 10-15mm in length to the queen which
is 20mm long. They all have two pairs of wings
which lock together. The needle-like sting is
possessed only by the females and is concealed
near the tip of the abdomen.

35. Biology
► In wasps, as in other Hymenoptera, sexes are
significantly genetically different. Females have 2n
number of chromosomes and come about from
fertilized eggs. Males, in contrast, have a haploid (n)
number of chromosomes and develop from an
unfertilized egg. Wasps store sperm inside their body
and control its release for each individual egg as it is
laid; if a female wishes to produce a male egg, she
simply lays the egg without fertilizing it. Therefore,
under most conditions in most species, wasps have
complete voluntary control over the sex of their
offspring

36. ► Anatomy and sex
► Anatomically, there is a great deal of
variation between different types of wasp.
Like all insects, wasps have a hard
exoskeleton covering their three main body
parts. These parts are known as the head,
mesosoma and metasoma. Wasps also have a
constricted region joining the first and
second segments of the abdomen (the first
segment is part of the mesosoma, the second Wasp ocelli
is part of the metasoma) known as the petiole (simple eyes)
. Like all insects, wasps have three sets of and dorsal
two legs. In addition to their compound eyes, part of the
wasps also have several simple eyes known compound eyes
; also showing
as ocelli. These are typically arranged in a fine,
triangular formation just forward of an area unbranched
of the head known as the vertex. hairs

37. ► It is possible to distinguish between sexes of some wasp
species based on the number of divisions on their
antennae. For example, male yellowjacket wasps has 13
divisions per antenna, while females have 12. Males can
in some cases be differentiated from females by virtue
of having an additional visible segment in the metasoma
. The difference between sterile female worker wasps
and queens also varies between species but generally
the queen is noticeably larger than both males and other
females.
► Wasps can be differentiated from bees, which have a
flattened hind basitarsus. Unlike bees, wasps generally
lack plumose hairs

38. Sand wasp (Bembix oculata, family
Adult European beewolf ( Crabronidae) removing bodily
Philanthus triangulum) fluids from a fly after paralysing it
feeding on nectar with the sting

39. Distribution
► Several species of wasps exist in the UK but the
most abundant is the Common Wasp and
German wasp, both of which are widely
distributed. Both species nest underground or in
the cavities of trees, walls and Buildings.