Since bees do not have lungs, they breathe with air sacs and have a well-developed tracheal system. As mentioned earlier, the air pockets located in the fort network play an important role in helping the bees breathe. Bees also have air sacs, although these are used to increase the efficiency of breathing rather than to oxygenate the bees’ blood.
Bees lack lungs. Bees are insects, and insects lack lungs. Instead, bees possess trachea. These are tubes that fill the bee’s body and permit gas exchange. The presence of trachea enables bees to conserve water because none is lost due to exhalation, which bees cannot perform. As such, bees may survive underwater.
Their respiratory system extends throughout the body, including air pockets in the head, abdominal region, and chest. The bees then use the tracheal respiratory system to deliver oxygen directly to various parts of the body.
How the Bee Respiratory System Works
The windpipe is made up of large and small tubes, depending on how far the windpipe needs to carry oxygen away from the stomata. Instead of our lungs, honeybees have tracheal sacs that connect them to the airways through a network of tubes called trachea. Their heads do not have airways, so these tracheal sacs are connected by two large tubes that enter the head through the bee’s neck.
The thoracic tracheal sacs contain the smallest volume of air among the three-membered segments of the bee. While honey bees have a series of small tracheal sacs that are a bit like mini lungs that suck in, store, and release air, they are nonetheless not lungs as we know them.
In contrast to humans, bees do not breathe oxygen through their noses or mouths, but have pairs of holes in their bodies called stomata. Air first enters through pores called stomata on the sides, which open and close as the bees contract their abdominal muscles.
These sacs expand and contract in response to the bees’ demand for oxygen, helping to control the amount of air that passes through the tube. Underwater, bees can close their stomata and breathe using the oxygen stored in these sacs, rather than taking in fresh air from outside. For example, desert-dwelling insects can close their stomata to prevent water evaporation and use air pockets as a kind of oxygen reservoir to keep their tissues oxygenated.
Air Exchange within a Bee’s Body
The respiratory tissues of the bees mainly collect oxygen from the air, and at the same time, carbon dioxide is pumped into the trachea and excreted from the body of the bees. The spiracle is a valve-like connection to a tube, the trachea, which allows oxygenated air to enter the tracheal system, facilitating the uptake of oxygen as well as the removal of carbon dioxide. The trachea is a tubular structure that runs throughout the body of the bees, connecting the spiracles to the tracheal sacs, allowing oxygen to pass between the two structures.
The respiratory system of bees is made up of stomata, trachea, and air sacs, which together help bees inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. The respiratory system of honeybees is a complex process involving the abdominal air sacs, trachea, abdominal stomata (holes used for breathing), tracheal sacs and trachea (the smaller branches of the windpipe).
When oxygen passes through the stomata, normally as part of the normal air mixture, bees breathe, travel through the air sacs to further branches of the trachea, and complete the excursion by colonizing bee cells.
Fresh air enters the tracheal trunk and continues through the tracheal tube system of branches that connect to the thin-walled sections that form the air sacs (atria) for temporary storage. Small branches and tubes called the trachea and trachea emerge from the sac and shunt to the tissue, where they supply oxygen. Oxygen enters the bee’s tissue through tiny openings in the body wall called scars, and then into the bee’s tissue through tiny air-filled blind tubes called the trachea.
When a bee’s trachea reaches vital organs such as the bee’s body tissue and bee’s heart, it contracts into a trachea and is swallowed by the trachea. Damaged airways lose elasticity until the bees can’t breathe enough to fly or even perform normal hive duties.
Bees Can Survive Underwater for a Long Time
Under water, using the hydrophobic covering of their spiracles combined with the air pockets in the bee’s body, the bee can survive for a relatively long time. Bees do not usually fly in the rain, as wind and water drops can damage their delicate wings.
Honeybees breathe through a complex system of hollow tubes called trachea, which are essentially extensions of their rigid exoskeleton, the outer shell of the body that keeps its structure rigid in the same way our endoskeleton holds our shape.
Once inside the trachea, the air simply diffuses from a high concentration on the surface to a lower concentration, and the tube connects directly to the organ’s muscles and tissues, displacing the fluid that fills the resting bee’s interior. Instead of filtering oxygen through the blood, called hemolymph in bees, the trachea is used only to transport nutrients, but to make it easier for oxygen to go directly to the muscles.
By expanding the air sacs, oxygen is drawn into the body through openings in each part (stoma), then the valve closes and the air sacs deflate to force air into the smaller trachea, which always get smaller until a single tubule reaches a single cell. The two tracheal trunks not only supply air to the tracheal sac in the head, but also connect to the large duct, which connects the major indirect flight muscles to the forelimbs and major indirect flight muscles. Bees start the breathing process by inhaling air through ten pairs of holes found in the thorax and abdomen of the thorax.
