The number of eyes in a honey bee and the features of their structure. How many eyes do bees have? Faceted and photographic vision How many eyes does a honey bee have?

Feb 23rd, 2015

Honey bees, like most living creatures on Earth, have vision. (only it is not clear and not sharp). Otherwise, how can they fly among flowers and collect fragrant nectar and pollen? To the question how many eyes does a bee have? You can answer simply - five! Yes Yes. Not two, not three, but five! Moreover, two eyes are complex and three simple.

A quick inspection of a bee's head with the naked eye reveals two eyes. (on the sides of the head), which are called complex and consist of many cells (facets). A worker bee has five to six thousand such facets in each eye. It is assumed that with compound eyes the bee sees an image of an object in the form of a mosaic of individual dots.

The top photo shows simple bee eyes; on the bottom are the compound eyes of a bee.

But the two compound eyes are not the only ones on the bee's head. If you look closely, you can find three dots on the crown of the head (connecting which we get a triangle)- these are the simple eyes of a bee, or ocelli. The role of simple eyes is not well understood. The unanimous opinion boils down to their auxiliary role: perception of light intensity, signaling the approach of dawn or the onset of dusk.

Bees have well-developed color vision (much better than other insects). So, they distinguish the following colors (also human distinguishable): blue, yellow, orange, green, white. Bees do not distinguish the color red. In addition, bees have the ability to distinguish polarized light (almost as good as color or brightness), emitted, for example, by a blue sky.

The queen bee also has five eyes. And also two complex and three simple. Only the queen has three simple eyes moved closer to the forehead, and the drone has compound eyes half the size of its head (if not more). And the queen has 4-5 thousand facets in each compound eye, and the drone has 8-10 thousand.

It is believed that bees see moving objects much worse than stationary ones. It’s interesting why when a bee attacks, it’s better not to run away, but to stand still? After all, according to human logic, a moving bee will see you worse? That’s because she doesn’t see moving objects well, and she flies to get a better look. (this is already bee logic). However, there is also the exact opposite opinion - the eyes of a bee perceive moving objects better...

How bees see

How many eyes does a bee have? We found out that the honey bee has 5 eyes. How does she see the world around her? It turns out that he determines the degree of illumination with simple eyes, and uses complex eyes to see objects more clearly. (position of the hive, road to the bribe source, color of plant flowers), navigate in space, etc. If a bee clearly sees blue and yellow colors, then perhaps she sees the hives in the apiary like this:

We know that bees are hard-working insects. We love their honey, which they take such pains to make. We also use propolis, beeswax, poison for medicinal purposes. Over these centuries, people have managed to tame working insects. They bring benefits not only to people, but also to plants. It seems that we know everything about these workers. It becomes curious how they find fragrant flowers and purposefully fly to where they need to go? To do this, let's study the vision of a bee.

When most people are asked, “How many eyes does a bee have?” More than half will not be able to give the correct answer. If you look at the furry insect from afar, you can safely say that the honey bee has two large eyes. However, nature decided that this was not enough. Yes, visually she has a pair of rather large eyes.

We are confused by the elongated oval-shaped black balls located on the sides of the head. Findings from laboratory researchers help determine how many eyes a bee has. Upon detailed examination, bees additionally reveal three simple eyes. Their local location is on the crown, so it is impossible to immediately determine the exact number of visual organs of the insect. So how many eyes does a bee have? Detailed calculation required.

The head of a bee is a hard capsule. Upon magnification, it is revealed that the honey bee has eyes not only on the sides, but also on the back of the head capsule. There are a total of five eyes on a bee.

Let's look at the structure of complex and simple eyes in more detail. Oval large eyes are called facet eyes. These are a pair of complex visual organs. Simple ocelli located on the parietal part of the capsule are also called ocelli. These are those eyes that contain no more than one lens.

It is believed that the additional triangle of eyes is of an auxiliary nature. Simple eyes help hardworking insects distinguish morning from evening and perceive the intensity of lighting in space.

As it has already turned out, the striped insect has complex vision. Of the five eyes, two multifaceted eyes are of particular interest. They are also called compound eyes - they represent about six thousand independent cells. In drones, the number of such independent eyes is approximately eight thousand. This is due to their functionality.

Important! The drones' job is to carefully monitor the queen during the mating season in the hive. It is for this reason that they have more complex vision than honey bees.

Insects have compound eyes that resemble honeycombs. They consist of individual eyes - hexagons located on the surface of the facet eye. A separate cell is called ommatidia.

Each of them consists of 8–9 oblong optic cells, which have a thin border directed inside the bundle itself. In the process of combining the border, a glassy axis is formed. In it, light stimuli are processed through receptors using a chitinous lens and a crystal cone. Ommatidia are separated from each other by pigment cells.

Individually, each cell is capable of capturing only those rays that run parallel to the axis. By summing the rays from all ommatidia, the final appearance of the uninverted image is obtained. The sharpness of the image of an object in insects differs significantly from human visual perception.

The photo clearly shows how the environment is perceived by flying insects. Like a mosaic, the overall picture is divided into its small particles.

How do bees see?

Everything is clear about the number of eyes - in the end they were counted as many as five. The peculiarity of vision that the honey bee has is the difference in colors. What is interesting is how the world appears to these insects. Scientists have carefully studied this issue.

As it turned out, the spectrum of color perception is significantly shifted towards short waves. In other words, the structure of the eyes of bees is very different from animals and humans. For example, a striped insect will not see red, but violet shades are perceived normally.

That is, a flower meadow, especially a poppy one, is not a bright red carpet for them. From above, bees will perceive everything as purple. Small insects manage to see colors ranging from red to purple. Moreover, they are able to capture ultraviolet waves.

Important! When building a bee town, beekeepers will do well to take note of the structural features of the visual organ of insects. The color of the hives is chosen based on the preferences of their future inhabitants.

Striped insects can distinguish up to two hundred light flashes per second. For comparison, a person can distinguish only 20. This speed helps insects communicate with each other.

Their dynamic movement in the hive, moving their paws and wings are a kind of signals that they transmit to their brothers. From the outside, a person does not notice any peculiarities in the movement of bees. But insects, using their “language,” are able to accurately determine the distance to the required flower. Even swinging the flower to the sides will not prevent the bees from losing their distance.

Knowing how many pairs of compound eyes the inhabitants of the hives have, one can assume that their vision is akin to that of an eagle, but this is far from the case. The bee individual is able to focus exclusively on large objects. Her eye is physically unable to perceive tiny details. Compared to humans, the latter perceives objects 30 times smaller than those seen by honey bees.

How does vision function in bees?

Each of the facet cells tends to be responsible only for image fragments. The number of individual parts of a particular object can reach up to a thousand. Then, like a puzzle, they are put together in the bee’s brain into a single picture. This kind of vision can be called mosaic. In other words, the overall picture consists of a large number of parts of the image. This mechanism is observed in the compound eyes of insects.

In order to see a nearby object, industrious insects use simple eyes. If the functioning of facet vision were excluded, tabbys would be like blind kittens. They would constantly crash into things until they couldn't see things very closely. It is thanks to the vision of compound eyes that a bee is able to cover a wide area around it. The device of the lateral organs of vision helps to orientate perfectly during flights.

Useful video

Let's sum it up

Summing up, we can safely say how many eyes a bee has - there are 5 of them. Also, small insects are able to distinguish many more shades than humans. The same is true with plants, some of them are perceived equally by the human eye, which cannot be said about bees, they are able to distinguish all flowers. For example, take white flowers. For humans, this is about one color, but bees are able to detect shades. Things are problematic with red flowers. To honey-bearing insects they appear to be completely different in shade.

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People have long “tamed” bees, which were previously wild, and today they are successfully used to produce honey, mainly. As a by-product - propolis, pollen, poison. And the benefits of these hardworking insects for pollinating many plants can hardly be overestimated! In apiaries and dachas, you can often see simple hives where bees live, carefully bringing people the products of their vital activity. Today we will talk about the structure of these insects and their sensory organs. Find out how they see and how many eyes bees have from our article.

Sense organs

Bees navigate the world around them using: vision, hearing, smell, taste and others.

Smell and touch. They help the bee maintain spatial orientation in a dark nest or hive. The olfactory organs are located on the antennae of the insect. Some of the hairs covering the bee's body are and are connected to the nervous system. Interestingly, drones have several times more pores responsible for their sense of smell than ordinary bees.

The taste organs are located in the bee’s throat, on its proboscis, on its legs and antennae.

And these insects hear sounds with the help of organs located on the legs and other parts of the body.

By the way, bees have other organs that are responsible for a more complete perception of the world around them. They analyze atmospheric humidity, temperature differences, and the amount of carbon dioxide in the air. These organs allow bees to exercise control over the microclimate of the home for optimal development of insect larvae in the honeycombs.

How many eyes do bees have?

A separate issue is the visual organs. If you look at a honey plant from afar, then to the question: “How many eyes does a bee have?” Most likely you will answer: “Two.” And you will be wrong. Because in fact there are five of them! Visually confusing are the two huge compound eyes, located on the sides of the head and looking like two ovals. There are three more simple eyes located on the crown of the insect, but these are noticeable upon closer inspection. Let's take a closer look at the question of how many eyes bees have.

Simple

Three simple ones, located on the crown, provide photographic vision and resemble a camera. In them, like on a photographic plate, visible objects are reproduced (they act on the branched endings there). All three images in the simple eyes of a bee are combined into one by superposition.

Complex

How many eyes does a bee have? Photos only in rare cases allow us to give the correct answer to this question. The insect's compound eyes are made completely differently. If you look at the structure of a bee's eye under a microscope, you can see the structure of the organ. The entire surface is mesh. It is made up of thousands of facets (micro-plates in the shape of a hexagon). The facets, by the way, resemble a honeycomb in their structure. Light-proof tubes pass from the facets to the nerve endings, through which the visual signal arrives. Thus, this organ in an insect consists of a large number of cells fused together. The worker bee has up to five thousand of them, the drone has much more - up to eight. The queen has five thousand small ocelli in each compound eye. This type of vision is called facet vision and is found in many insects (for example, flies).

Mechanism of vision

Each of the facet cells is responsible for only part of the image. There can be thousands of such individual parts of a visible object, and they all combine into a single whole in the bee’s brain. An alternative name for such vision is mosaic.

If in complex pictures the picture consists of many images, then with simple eyes insects look at objects close up. Interestingly, when the possibility of facet vision is excluded, bees behave as if they are blind or have poor vision, and can only see objects by flying close enough to them. With its compound eyes, a bee is able to survey large spaces, which allows it to navigate during flights.

Bright sunny day. Above the green meadow there is silence and freedom. Hold your breath and you will hear a monotonous hum. Very close by, bees work tirelessly, not leaving a single seemingly inconspicuous flower with their attention. It's amazing how well organized these mysterious insects are. During the short summer, they need to collect enough nectar and pollen to provide food for the entire bee colony.

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Classmates

Beekeepers use all the waste products of bees:

propolis;
royal jelly;
collected pollen;
bee venom;
wax;
death (dead insects).

How many eyes does a bee have?

All insects have a surprisingly complex structure of visual organs. A pair of bulging eyes on the sides of the head is immediately visible. These are compound eyes.

But bee vision is not limited to this organ. At the top of the head there is a triangle formed from three spots. These are three simple eyes. Now we can answer the question of how many eyes a bee has: as many as five.

Why does a bee have so many eyes?

There is a strict hierarchy in the bee family:

workers;
queen bee;
drones.

They differ in the structure of organs, including the visual ones.

Working individual has a triangular head, its compound eyes, consisting of five thousand segments, are located on each side of a black triangle of simple eyes on the top of its head.

On the rounded head of the queen, simple eyes are located on the forehead; facet eyes are larger than those of a worker bee, but the number of segments is smaller, up to four thousand. She does not have to fly around large spaces; her main life passes in the darkness of the hive.

Life for drones is easier and sweeter than for workers. They do not have to search for nectar from early morning until late evening. And their vision is even more complex. Their compound eyes are the largest and consist of ten thousand fragments. Simple eyes are located, like a uterus, on the forehead. The task of the drones is to find the hive and climb into it in order to perform the functions of procreation and provide themselves with both a table and a home.

This is how, knowing the location of the bees’ eyes, you can determine which of the three categories the caught insect belongs to.

Three simple eyes allow the insect to get a clear picture of nearby objects. These eyes are like simple lenses protruding above the surface of the chitinous covering of the head. The images transmitted from them are similar to each other, like frames of the same film. But they help to navigate well in a dark and cramped hive.

An enlarged photograph of a bee's head shows the complex structure of the compound eyes, for protection they are covered with a chitinous shell, on top of which there is a crystalline structure resembling a honeycomb. From each eye there is a tapering tube with a completely black surface to absorb light; at the end of the tube there are nerve endings.

The structure of compound eyes

Each fragment is a tiny peephole, transmitting a piece of the image. The picture they paint is fuzzy and blurry. It is believed that the image coming from these organs of vision is assembled like a mosaic picture. But thanks to the facets, the bee covers a wide area during flights. When the compound eyes of an insect were sealed during experiments, they behaved as if they were blind. Human vision is similar to bees' vision, but we see more of a created image of an object, while insects collect detailed information from individual pieces of a visual puzzle.

Surprisingly, these eyes also distinguish colors differently. Bees see the world around them in various shades of blue, green, yellow, white and purple. But they don’t pick up red, like black. But their simple eyes see the ultraviolet spectrum. It is believed that simple eyes help the bee to distinguish the time of day: dawn and dusk. Flower petals are covered with a magnificent pattern of colors inaccessible to humans in the ultraviolet range, which shows the path for insects to nectar.

According to one opinion, the bee detects movement well, therefore, you should not frighten the insect by causing it to react aggressively. And according to another version, the bee does not see moving objects well, so it flies closer to take a closer look...

Insects do not distinguish the shape of objects so well. It is best if the object resembles a flower, and geometric shapes do not cause interest.

Insects also see polarized light- light propagating in one direction, which occurs when reflected from glass, the surface of water or crystals. Therefore, they see obstacles well and navigate in space.

23.12.2016 0

How many eyes does a bee have and what spectrum of color vision does it have? You will learn the answer to this question from our review.

Bees have eyes too

Honey bees, like other living things, have a visual system. The world through the eyes of a bee is not as clear as, for example, through the eyes of a person or a dog, but she sees it - and this is a fact. Without eyes, an insect could not fly from flower to flower and collect delicious nectar. How many eyes does a bee have? There are five in total:

three simple;
two difficult ones.

On the sides of the head there are two large complex eyes, consisting of a whole set of facets (facets are such cells). Their number can vary - the larger the individual, the more cells there are in the compound eye. Due to this structure, the bee sees objects as mosaic pictures consisting of a set of individual dots. The drone has twice as many cells in its compound eye as the queen.

A bee's simple eyes are located on the crown of the head. They look like small dots, connecting which you get a triangle. The role of simple eyes is auxiliary, that is, they perceive not objects, but the intensity of lighting. They are the ones who give the insect information about what time of day it is.

Yes, the peculiarities of a bee's vision make it possible to recreate only a fairly fuzzy, blurry image. But it turns out to be voluminous and large-scale - this allows the bee to cover quite a significant space during its flight. It was not by chance that nature endowed the insect with two types of eyes - they complement each other, making the picture realistic, complete and understandable.

Color vision

In addition, bees have well-developed color vision - something that no other insect has. Color visual spectrum:

Blue.
Yellow.
Green.
Orange.
White.

Insects can distinguish polarized rays (such as those emitted by the blue sky). At the same time, the bee’s eyes do not distinguish red from black, but green and orange are perceived as shades of yellow.

The special structure of the eyes allows the insect to perceive objects in volume, but they see shape differently - the bee does not differentiate various geometric shapes well, but it perceives flowers and other objects that have the outline of a flower quite normally. The insect sees moving objects better; stationary objects are of less interest to it.

That is why, when processing hives and simply when communicating with bees, you need to make as few sudden movements as possible - in a calm state she is not interested in a person, and she perceives someone who is active as a source of aggression.

What are the main features of the honey bee's color spectrum of vision? Let’s say right away that the human system itself is completely different. In bees, it is no better or worse, but it provides the insect’s current needs as fully as possible.

The color mark turns out to be quite eloquent - all thanks to the fact that nectar indicators almost always have a strong, very special smell (that is, individual parts of the flower do not smell the same as the flower as a whole). The optical nectar index acts as an “aroma index”. A person inhales the aroma of a flower and does not even think about how many particles it consists of.

Bees perceive smell more spatially, highlighting individual notes and using the information received to collect pollen or nectar. If a person saw a flower the same way a bee sees it, he would be surprised how many varieties there are with excellent nectar characteristics. Moreover, the bee detects these indicators immediately, but the human eye does not, since it does not perceive the ultraviolet spectrum of radiation.

To get a rough idea of the picture, take a photo of the plant through three filters in accordance with the colors perceived by insects.

Video: incredible bees.

The world through the eyes of a bee

We have already found out that a bee has eyes, there are only five of them, and it sees pictures like a mosaic. Let's figure out how an insect generally perceives the world around it:

the bee uses its simple eyes to determine the degree of illumination;
she needs complex eyes for clear recognition of objects and orientation in space;
she sees a hive if it is painted in the color that the visual system recognizes.

Do you want to prevent insects from wandering around in search of a beehive? Paint their houses blue, green, yellow, orange or white.

There are as many individual ocelli in one eye as there are hexagons on its surface. Each individual ocellus (another name is ommatidium) is formed by a bunch of cells in a thin border. The cells have an elongated shape, and the borders are connected to each other into an axis, where they undergo processing. In the lateral parts, each ommatidium is separated from the other by pigment cells.

Individual eyes register only rays running parallel to its axis. Deviations from this direction are possible, but very minor. In the bee's vision system, it is the ommatidia that play an important role, but they are not capable of producing a clear image - the kind that a person sees. The picture seems to be divided by a raster into a set of individual dots.

The structure of the ommatidia described above ensures normal observation of those objects that move and are not at rest. In this case, the light is perceived by the cells of the eye one by one - the irritations mutually reinforce each other, that is, a chain reaction is triggered.

It is interesting that in worker bees and queens the simple eyes are very small and are located on the crown of the head, but in a drone they will be on the forehead and are quite large in size.