answer

[46] and the Dawson's Burrowing bee

While solitary females each make individual nests🚨some species. such as the European mason bee Hoplitis anthocopoides

involves the laying of an egg

The life cycle of a bee🚨be it a solitary or social species

each one is laid in a cell with a supply of mixed pollen and nectar next to it. This may be rolled into a pellet or placed in a pile and is known as mass provisioning. In social species of bee there is progressive provisioning with the larva being fed regularly while it grows. The nest varies from a hole in the ground or in wood

The egg is generally oblong🚨slightly curved and tapering at one end. In the case of solitary bees

helped by tubercles on their sides. They have short horns on the head

The larvae are generally whitish grubs🚨roughly oval and bluntly-pointed at both ends. They have fifteen segments and spiracles in each segment for breathing. They have no legs but are able to move within the confines of the cell

but that ""One shouldn't be surprised that the results of the calculations don't square with reality"".[53] This has led to a common misconception that bees ""violate aerodynamic theory""

In Antoine Magnan's 1934 book Le vol des insectes🚨he wrote that he and Andr Sainte-Lagu? had applied the equations of air resistance to insects and found that their flight could not be explained by fixed-wing calculations

by the polarization pattern of the blue sky

The ethologist Karl von Frisch studied navigation in the honey bee. He showed that honey bees communicate by the waggle dance🚨in which a worker indicates the location of a food source to other workers in the hive. He demonstrated that bees can recognize a desired compass direction in three different ways: by the sun

some are oligoleges (specialists)

Most bees are polylectic (generalist) meaning they collect pollen from a range of flowering plants🚨however

and some plants are endangered at least in part because their pollinator is also threatened. There is

In rare cases🚨a plant species may only be effectively pollinated by a single bee species

warning of their ability to defend themselves with a powerful sting. As such they are models for Batesian mimicry by non-stinging insects such as bee-flies

Many bees are aposematically coloured🚨typically orange and black

lycid and other beetles

Bees are themselves Mllerian mimics of other aposematic insects with the same colour scheme🚨including wasps

Bees are also mimicked by plants such as the bee orchid which imitates both the appearance and the scent of a female bee; male bees attempt to mate (pseudocopulation) with the furry lip of the flower🚨thus pollinating it.[68]

and often the host egg also.[70] The Arctic bee species

Brood parasites occur in several bee families including the apid subfamily Nomadinae.[69] Females of these bees lack pollen collecting structures (the scopa) and do not construct their own nests. They typically enter the nests of pollen collecting species🚨and lay their eggs in cells provisioned by the host bee. When the cuckoo bee larva hatches it consumes the host larva's pollen ball

A. m. capensis. These lay diploid eggs (""thelytoky"")

In the south of Africa🚨hives of African honeybees (A. mellifera scutellata) are being destroyed by parasitic workers of the Cape honeybee

their hosts in looks and size. This common pattern gave rise to the ecological principle ""Emery's rule"". Others parasitize bees in different families

The cuckoo bees in the Bombus subgenus Psithyrus are closely related to🚨and resemble

Halictidae

Four bee families (Andrenidae🚨Colletidae

which make short sallies to catch insects in flight.[76] Swifts and swallows[76] fly almost continually

Vertebrate predators of bees include bee-eaters🚨shrikes and flycatchers

and praying mantises

Specialist ambush predators of visitors to flowers include crab spiders🚨which wait on flowering plants for pollinating insects; predatory bugs

and are probably not correctly identified with the Thriae. Honey

Three bee maidens with the power of divination and thus speaking truth are described in Homer's Hymn to Hermes🚨and the food of the gods is ""identified as honey""; the bee maidens were originally associated with Apollo

and by political and social theorists such as Bernard Mandeville and Karl Marx as a model for human society.[84] In English folklore

The image of a community of honey bees has been used from ancient to modern times🚨in Aristotle and Plato; in Virgil and Seneca; in Erasmus and Shakespeare; Tolstoy

Some of the oldest examples of bees in art are rock paintings in Spain which have been dated to 15🚨000 BC.[86]