Structure of a Bee’s Wing – How can something so fragile be so strong? (BioE Spr2015)
May 27, 2015 • 10:38 AM UTC
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fcchen
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As we walked onto the Engineering Quad on Friday, we noticed the presence of various bees buzzing around the flower bushes. From afar, the wings of a bee appeared extremely delicate and quite thin. None of us knew what the actual structure of a bee’s wing was like, so we decided to investigate. The question we aimed to answer was – what is the structure of a bee’s wing and how could something so fragile support the bee?
Conveniently, our professor had already caught a bee nearby and was focused on studying the stinger. We walked right over and retrieved a wing from the fallen bee. First we examined the wing with our naked eyes. It looked as if the wing was composed of tiny sections, connected like a web. One of us thought that it resembled the structure of a leaf. On the outer edge of the wing, there seemed to be some sort of muscle or large vein that held the web in place.
Conveniently, our professor had already caught a bee nearby and was focused on studying the stinger. We walked right over and retrieved a wing from the fallen bee. First we examined the wing with our naked eyes. It looked as if the wing was composed of tiny sections, connected like a web. One of us thought that it resembled the structure of a leaf. On the outer edge of the wing, there seemed to be some sort of muscle or large vein that held the web in place.
Next, we decided to place the wing on a slide, and view it under the foldscope.
From the images we gathered, we learned that the wing was made up of a thin membrane with intersecting veins. The veins were dark yellow and resembled small tubes. They intersected and enclosed spaces of the wing. We hypothesized that the veins hold the membrane sections in place and compose the structure of the wing. On the outer edge of the wing, we observed that the vein was quite large, and we believe this is probably to help facilitate the actual beating of the wing.
From the images we gathered, we learned that the wing was made up of a thin membrane with intersecting veins. The veins were dark yellow and resembled small tubes. They intersected and enclosed spaces of the wing. We hypothesized that the veins hold the membrane sections in place and compose the structure of the wing. On the outer edge of the wing, we observed that the vein was quite large, and we believe this is probably to help facilitate the actual beating of the wing.
One thing that was surprising to us was the tiny black dots we found scattered through the membrane. They looked similar to tiny hairs. We hypothesized that these hairs were responsible for gathering sensory input from the surrounding environment and relaying it back to the bee.
We had a lot of fun investigating the various areas of the bee wing. At the end of day, there are still many questions left unanswered, especially concerning the hairs: what exactly do they help the bee sense? Is there significance in the distribution and densities of these hairs? At the very least though, our observations from the foldscope tell us that a bee’s wing, seemingly fragile, is in reality quite complex and sturdy, with likely many functions.
By: Ariel Zhou, Haley Fox, Fanny Chen
By: Ariel Zhou, Haley Fox, Fanny Chen
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