Dale Porter Jr., age 7, of Merrillville, Ind., for his question:
DO BEES HAVE BONES?
Bees do not ,have bones in their bodies. Bees are insects that live in almost every part of the world except near the North and South poles. There are more than 10,000 different kinds of bees on Earth.
Like all insects, a honeybee's body is divided into three sections: the head, the thorax or chest, and the abdomen. The boneless body is covered with fine hairs.
A bee has five eyes. Three of them are small and form a triangle on top of its head, while two large compound eyes are located on each side of the head. Each compound eye is made up of thousands of single eyes crowded close together.
A bee learns certain landmarks to guide it back to the hive. It can distinguish blue, yellow and ultraviolet, but it cannot focus its eyes, since the eyes have no pupils.
Antennae are slender, jointed feelers attached to the front of the bee's head. They have tiny sense organs that give the insect a means of smelling. Tiny hairs on the antennae probably serve the bee as organs of touch.
A bee uses its tongue to suck water, nectar and honey into its mouth. The tongue is a flexible tube on the outside of the bee's head. The tongue can be shortened, lengthened and moved in all directions. On the sides of the tongue are two jaws. The bee uses the jaws as tools to grasp wax and pollen.
A bee has four thin wings which are attached on the thorax. The front wing of each pair is larger than the hind wing. When the bee flies, the two wings of a pair are coupled together by a row of tiny hooks and act as one wing.
The wings can move up and down or forward and backward. The bee can fly backward, sideways or forward and it can also hover in one place in the air.
A bee has three legs on each side of the thorax.
Each of the bee's legs has five main joints, plus tiny segments that make up the foot. The worker bee uses its legs for walking and also as tools to handle wax scales and to brush pollen off its body. It carries pollen and propolis on its hind legs.
Bees are the only insects that produce food eaten by man. We use the wax from the nests of bees to make such products as candles and lipsticks. And we use their honey in cooking and as a spread on biscuits and toast.
Many fruits and vegetables would be unable to live without bees to help fertilize their flowers. The fertilization job is accomplished as the bees visit the flowers searching for nectar and pollen.
Only the honeybee, among the more than 10,000 species of bees, makes honey and wax that man can use.