Introduction
The head is one of the three main parts of the honeybee body. It is very moveable body part. The head of the honeybee has a few basic parts:
External visible part:
1. Eyes
2. Antenna
3. Mouthpart
Internal part:
1. Brain
2. Glands: Salivary, Mandibular, Hypopharyngeal
3. Aorta
External visible parts
Eyes – bees have 5 eyes. There are two compound eyes. With them, the bees have a very wide field of view, almost 360 degrees. Honeybees can see completely different range of colors, so they see UV light, but can’t recognize the red color as human do. Bees also differently perceived movement than human eye. While in humans are already 24 frames per second seen as a movement, bees need up to 300 to perceive the motion, so that’s the reason why bees react rather to nervous movements. The bee has three simple eyes, they don’t produce an image and only provide information about the direction and intensity of light.
Antennas-they represent the sense of smell. Bees have an excellent sense of smell and vary more than 40 kinds of different scents. The sense of smell is very important in the search for food, and is impacted by pheromones of other honeybees and queen bee.
Mouthpart-Bees mouth consists of mandibles and a proboscis. That is a reason that bees can chew and suck. The mandibles are the paired “teeth” that can be open and closed to chew wood, manipulate wax, cleaning other bees, and biting other workers or pests (mites). The proboscis is mainly used for sucking in liquids such as nectar, water and honey inside the hive, for exchanging food with other bees (trophallaxis), and also for removing water from nectar
Internal parts
Brain – This is a very simple central nervous system bees. The brain has a large area for receiving inputs from the two compound eyes, called optic lobes.
Glands
-Salivary glands are well developed in queens and workers; in drones they are small. Salivary glands of workers are more active when they are foraging. Head salivary glands produce oily secretion which contains mixture of hydrocarbons that is used to: soften wax and lubricate mouthparts.
-Mandibular gland is a simple sac-like structure attached to each of the mandibles. In the queen this is the source of the powerful queen pheromone.
-Hypopharyngeal glands consist of a pair of long glands coiled in the sides of the Each gland consists 550 oval lobules. This gland is producing royal jelly.
Aorta is the only vessel in the bee body and from the bee heart finishing directly in the bee head.