The tireless workers in savannah

AT the beginning of this month, through a joyful celebration we marked workers day.

Beautified by the President of the United Republic of Tanzania, the day allowed workers of this great country to join hands with the international community to mark the special day.

Meanwhile paleontologists say the Earth was created about four billion years ago and scientists are saying arthropods were the first creatures to inhabit this planet which was going through uncountable climate changes.

This is a phylum which is mainly made by invertebrate animals whose bodies are covered by hard shell called exoskeleton.

Members of this group are found mainly in the class of insects, a group which contains more than 14 thousand species of ants and whose ancestors are believed to evolve from a wasp about 130 million years ago when the first flower blossom took place on earth.

History shows that modern people came into existence about 200 million years ago, it is also being said that insects dwelled on earth 40 million years from the time of creation.

This is a fact which gives them more experience than people who regard themselves as smartest creatures. Paleontologists say about ten thousand years ago, human started farming activities after migrating from African to other continents.

That was caused by higher demand for food which forced them to adapt to changes or perish. Scientist say ants started 50 million years ago when they adapted domestication of fungi who are raised for food.

Zoologists say most ants are predators who kill and eat other insects, they are also scavenger who live by eating dead bodies of other creatures.

Unlike others, leaf cutters are farmers who are found in a group of ants called Attine which is made up with more than 200 species scattered all over the world except the earth’s poles which are covered by ice throughout the year.

These are rainforest dwellers who live in a colony consisting of not less than eight million insects. These are workers who work tirelessly to collect leaves from careful selected specie of vegetation.

This is a unique supply which are taken in a special area located inside the nestle which is treated as a garden where division of labour is implemented according sex and body size.

These are fungus garden where largest workers cut leaves and bring them from the outside and give them to medium size workers who chew the leave.

Then they are made ready for fermentation by adding special chemical from their bodies which allow the growth of micro bacteria.

These are agents who breakdown the leaves as the workers continue with intensive job of grooming by constantly supplying it with fresh cuts, pruning by removing unwanted parts and weeding out infected parts of their crops.

Leaf cutter ants exclusively make combination of leaf materials, special matter and their saliva which is put at the disposal of bacteria who use it to grow special food for the ants. Scientists say this is an obligate relation between the two creatures.

Without ants’ support, the bacteria will die because from millions of years ago they have lost ability to live outside the leaf cutters’ nestles.

On the other side these species of ants go into extinction when their larvae miss their prime food.

According to many scientific literatures, ants do a lot of unbelievable things including attending special classes in an open area of Savannah where a senior worker acts as a teacher for un experienced young workers.

Through special procedures called Tandem running the ants learn different skills of life including walking to a food source and defend what they have.

These techniques give ants greater abilities against most of their rivals including humans who fear and hate them.

Scientists say ants play very important role in ecological conservation wherever they are dwelling weather its in the tropical rainforest of the savannah.

As they dig tunnels on the ground, ants bring on the surface fertile soil materials which plant roots are not able to obtain them because most these important ingredients are located in a zone called subsoil.

That is why cultivation of vegetables around mount Meru in Arusha is easy and plantation of banana in area around mount Kilimanjaro is good because every ants take to the ground different decaying plant materials and animal wastes which enrich the soil.

Some ants have powerful jaws which they use to dig tunnels on rocks which then are used by delicate plant roots to penetrate and reach down to fertile soil.

Scientists say meat eating ants are cleaners of the savannah where dead bodies of insects, reptiles, birds and mammals are left out after a death of a hyena or other scavenger. Its believed that there more than 14 thousand species of ants.

Scientists say these are endemic to Tanzania while a specie called Dorylus is always helping the pastoralists societies of East Africa by sending an army consisting of more than eight million ants to attack and kill harmful insects found in animal’s waste.

Meanwhile, scientists say the life cycles of insects vary but most hatch from eggs. Insect growth is constrained by the inelastic exoskeleton and development involves a series of molts.

Among different species such as honeybee, the immature stages can differ from the adults in structure, habit and habitat, and can include a passive pupal stage and this kind of evolution process is found mainly in those groups that undergo four stages of metamorphosis such as honeybee.

Zoologist define a honeybee as an insect which is primarily distinguished by the production and storage of honey and the construction of perennial, colonial nests from wax.

History shows that honeybees evolved on Earth about 34 million years ago, the specie which dwells in honey producing regions such as Tabora, Iringa, Njombe and Ruvuma are hybrids of European stocks and different African sub species.

At a certain time, the African bees descended from an ancestral stock of cave nesting honeybee specie which split into two groups, one migrated into Asia and the largest group moved to East Africa where they become very aggressive to produce large amount of honey than their cousins in Europe.

Fossils records indicate that during the last ice age about 2.6 million years ago, there was a climate changes which affected blossoming of flowers from different plants in different regions of the world including East Africa.

Like other species, African bees lead social life in a colony which is made by a bee queen, which is a fertile female and assumes the responsibilities of laying eggs, others are drones or fertile males and worker bees or sterile females which tirelessly work for the rest members of a bee hive.

Scientists say like other insects, bees are able to lay large numbers of eggs in short periods of time whereby one queen bee is capable to lay more than 1,500 eggs.

Moreover, an egg is the organic vessel containing the zygote in which an animal embryo develops until it can survive on its own, at which point the animal hatches. An egg results from fertilisation of an ovum.

Eggs are common among invertebrates, including insects such as honeybee.

Among honeybee that happen after the queens typically mate with multiple drones on more than one mating flight.

Amid honeybees when the eggs are laid, the queen bee can either choose to fertilise the egg or not and that’s what decides what class the bee will belong to.

The class is the social structure that all honey bees follow, with each hive member having specific responsibilities they follow in order for the hive to run smoothly.

Drones are slightly larger than worker bees, and so require a larger cell.

Fertilised eggs become female worker bees, while unfertilised eggs become drones. Three days after bee eggs are laid, they hatch, and the bees enter the larval stage.

At this point for first three days, it depends on a lot of milk from the nurse. On the fourth day it begins to absorb honey and at this stage, bee larvae continue to grow and gain weight from 0.1 milligram to 150 milligrams.

If it is no longer fits under its nucleus, it moves to the exit with its head and puts it together. Bee larvae are small and white, growing rapidly.

In fact, they shed their skin five times during this stage in the bee life cycle. Zoologists define this stage as a distinct juvenile form whereby animals undergo before metamorphosis into a full adult stage meanwhile scientists say in some species of insects larvae are dependent on adults to feed them.

Some scientists say bee larvae is not the same as adult insects and is quite different from that in the same way as a butterfly because an adult individual belongs to the free, cruel bee, while its larvae, on the contrary, is completely inactive and cannot take care of itself.

Thus, they are at different stages of the food chain and do not compete with each other for food, but use nearby resources. The larvae are essentially helpless, without legs or even eyes.

They remain in the same cells where they hatched from the egg and have to rely on worker bees to feed them.

Bee larvae have voracious appetites and eat continuously throughout the day. First, they start on a meal of royal jelly produced by nurse bees. Queen bees also feed on this same jelly.

After a period of time, larvae go from eating royal jelly to eating a mixture of honey and pollen.

After approximately five days of nonstop eating and growing, honey bee larvae are sealed in their cells with wax for the next stage.

Bee larvae can vary in size depending on the species, the baby has a large round body and they can only move by wriggling crawling.

Within their sealed cell, the larvae enter the pupal stage of the bee life cycle. During the pupa stage, what was a small white larva starts to develop into the honey bee that you would recognise.

The wings, legs, and eyes form. After just over a week, the new adult bee chews its way out of the wax covering of its cell to enter the hive.

The caste of honey bee determines how long the bee takes to develop in its pupal stage. Drones take the longest to develop in their pupal stage, followed by female worker bees, followed, finally, by the queen bee. Adult honey bees emerge from their cells knowing exactly what their role will be in the hive.

The strict class system is why honey bees are able to function so efficiently.

The class of the adult honey bee also determines what size they’ll be. Queen bees are the largest, at around three-quarters of 20 millimetres, followed by drone bees and worker bees and these are usually around 15 millimetres in size.

In just under a month, honey bees go from being laid as eggs to emerging as fully formed bee adults. Like many other bees, honey bees operate in colonies.

Each bee caste member, from drone to worker bee, plays an important part in a properly functioning colony.

Colonies are built around one fertile female bee or the queen bee who begins her life in the same way that other female workers start their lives.

However, queen bees are never weaned off royal jelly to the mixture of honey and pollen that other bees receive. The queen bee will then develop a full reproductive tract, unlike the other female worker bees, which are sterile.

Despite the colony only having one queen bee, it can still be made up of thousands of bees or even tens of thousands of bees.

The bees communicate through a variety of ways, including through pheromones and a complicated language relying on dance.

While bees are necessary to life on earth, and honey bees in particular are extremely important because of their ability to pollinate, they can pose a danger if threatened, especially to those that are allergic.

People that are allergic to bee stings can react in just a few minutes. Bees can be dangerous if threatened, but there are suggested guidelines to avoid stings since honey bees are important pollinators.

Pollination is the transfer of pollen from the anther of a flower to the stigma of a flower later enabling fertilisation and the production ofseeds.

In this case pollination involves pollinators which is also called pollen vectors, meanwhile organisms that carry or move the pollen grains from the anther of one flower to the receptive part of the carpel or pistil of another.

With this ability, honeybees are responsible for majority of the pollination for consumed crops.

Air pollution and deforestation in different parts of the world are forcing honeybees to go outside their traditional foraging zones in tropical forests in Africa, this also affects quantity and quality of honey collected from different woodlands in the world.