How do bees make honey?

It is a mistake to image that bees get readymade honey from flowers.  The honeybees make honey from nectar, the sweet juice found in blossoms.

The reason bees make honey is that it serves them as food.

To make honey, the honey bee sips the sweet nectar from blossoms with its long tongue, and stores it in its honey stomach.

Inside its honey stomach the bee adds special chemicals to the nectar.  The bee puts the treated nectar into a wax cell in the honeycomb, where it ripens into honey.

The bees that gather nectar also gather pollen from the blossoms.  Pollen, too, makes good bee food.

The dusty pollen from the blossoms brushes off upon the bee’s hairy body.  The bee scrapes it off with its legs and moistens it with a little nectar to make a clump, and then pushes it into pollen baskets on its back legs.

Bee pollen is sometimes called “bee bread,” and with pollen bees help plants bear good fruit and seeds.  They help the plants by carrying pollen from one flower to another of the same kind.-Dick Rogers

How do hummingbirds hum?

Usually, the only sound of a hummingbird is the whirring or humming sound it makes with its rapidly beating wings.

A hummingbird flaps its wings nearly 60 times in the time it takes you to blink your eyes.  The wings move so fast that only a misty outline can be seen.  They make the air vibrate, and we hear a humming sound.

The delicate and brightly colored hummingbird usually measures less than four inches from bill to tail and weights about as much as a copper penny.

No other bird can fly in so many ways as the hummingbird.  It can quickly dart up, down, backward, forward or it can hover nearly motionless in the air like a helicopter.

The active little bird must eat every 10 to 15 minutes it is awake to maintain its tiring pace. It flits from flower to flower and hovers above each blossom.  

It sips the sweet nectar through its long, tube-shaped tongue and picks up any small insect that it may find in the flower. Most, but not all hummingbirds are tiny.  The largest is the giant hummer.  It grows nearly 9 inches long.-Dick Rogers

What is a lynx?

Lynxes are wild members of the cat family. They can easily be distinguished from the other cats by their stumpy tails, long legs, and long tufts of hair on their pointed ears.

Primarily a forest animal, the North American Lynx Lives mainly in the great Canadian forests from Labrador to Alaska.

If you live in the United States south of Canada you may know another kind of lynx better by the name of “bobcat” or “wildcat.”

Bobcats are found running wild in many parts of the United States and Mexico.  They are smaller than their northern cousins and have shorter ear tuffs.  Bobcats get their name from their “bobbed” tails.

In winter, the big feet of the northern lynx serve as snowshoes, allowing it to run swiftly over the snow. The rabbits on which the lynx preys try to escape notice by lying perfectly still.  The lynx, unable to tell exactly where the rabbit is, emits a piercing howl.

The timid rabbit, startled by the fearful sound cannot help jumping; thereby disclosing its hiding place to the crafty lynx.-Dick Rogers

What is a leech?

Leeches are bloodsuckers which belong to the worm family.  Most leaches live in water, where they attach themselves to fishes, animals and even to people. Some swamps and ponds contain leeches, worms that can cling to fishes, animals and ever to persons.

Leeches may grow from ½-inch to 4 or more inches long.  Like many worms, they have soft, flat bodies divided into segments. On the leech’s head is a sucker like mouth equipped with three saw-shaped teeth.  A second sucker is located at the hind end of the leech.

The leech attaches itself to the host by means of its suckers.  Then, with the mouth sucker, it sucks up the blood through three little holes which it makes in the skin with its sharp teeth.

In a single meal a leech may eat three times its own weight in blood.  One meal may fast several months. Not all leeches suck blood.  Some feed instead on worms and other small animals that live in the water. 

During medieval times bloodsucking leeches were used by physicians to draw blood from patients in attempts to cure them. - Dick Rogers

What was a saber-toothed tiger?

Saber-toothed tigers were big cats with long, saber like teeth. In the Old Stone Age, there lived a bit cat, more ferocious in appearance than any known today.

This was the saber-toothed tiger.  It was not really a tiger.  But it resembled a tiger and had two long teeth curved like swords called sabers—which accounts for its name of “saber-toothed tiger.”

Sometimes its teeth were as long as 8 inches and could easily slash the thick skins of the large mammoths upon which it preyed.

Perhaps where you live today, saber-toothed tigers stalked their prey long ago.  They prowled most parts of the world and found plenty to eat in North America.

The last of them died out thousands of years ago. Some people think they became extinct because their teeth grew so long that they could no longer open their mouths wide enough to eat.

But it is more likely that they died out when the big animals upon which they depended for food became scarce. - Dick Rogers

How does a turtle get into its shell?

Everyone knows a turtle when he sees one.  Turtles are easy to recognize by their shells.  A baby turtle is born with a shell just the right size for its body.  As the turtle grows, its shell grows too.

The hard shells of most turtles are made up of a “bony box”  covered by horny plates.  A turtle can’t crawl out of its shell.  The shell makes up much of a turtle’s skeleton, and is firmly attached to its body.  Turtles are well-protected by their shells.  Some turtles, such as the box turtle, can pull their heads, tails, and legs into their shell when frightened.  Then, very few enemies can get at them.

All turtles hatch from eggs.  The mother turtle lays the eggs in a hole she has dug.  She then leaves them.  The sun’s warmth hatches the eggs in about two months.  As soon as the baby turtles are hatched, they are on their own.  They must be able to tend for themselves. - Dick Rogers

What is a quetzal?

The quetzal is a brilliantly plumed bird of Mexico and Central America, and sacred bird of the Aztec.

The quetzal is pronounced ket SAHL.  The male, hardly larger than a dove, has glittering, emerald green-and-crimson feathers, with graceful tail streamers over three feet long.

This inactive bird sits quietly for long periods on a perch in the dense forest, darling off only to capture insects.  The ancient Mayas and Aztecs found the quetzal so impressive that no one was allowed to harm it.

They used the long tail feathers (plucked without harm to the living bird) as symbol of authority and religion.  Only chiefs and priests were allowed to wear them.

Today the quetzal is the national bird of Guatemala, where it appears on postage stamps, coins and on the state seal.  Guatemala is sometimes called the “Land of the Quetzal.” - Dick Rogers