Bee Poll

[PhilinYuma]

Since several people have said that they don't feed unmutillated/live bees because of fear of injury to their mantids, I thought that it might be useful to see what percentasge of members use them and whether they have had problems.

If you never feed bees, you only have to answer the first question!

 

[Rick]

Yes occasionaly, no, no. Never honeybees. Actually I feed bees rarely because they are hard to catch and have little to eat on them, especially wasps.

 

[jameslongo]

Like Rick said, bees don't have much substance to them (their abdomens are empty). Also, my mantids don't partiularly like Hymenopterans as a general rule, probably due to the terrible mandibles they possess.

 

[bassist]

I've been seeing a lot of bees recently and use them as feeders every now and then. I also use wasps as well they try to bite/sting the mantis but the mantis can usually handle it.

 

[PhilinYuma]

Like Rick said, bees don't have much substance to them (their abdomens are empty). Also, my mantids don't partiularly like Hymenopterans as a general rule, probably due to the terrible mandibles they possess.

A housefly has a mass of about 12mgms and a honeybee, about 100 mgms, so if the bees' abdomens are empty, they must have pretty massive thoraces (and mandibles)!

 

[Rick]

A housefly has a mass of about 12mgms and a honeybee, about 100 mgms, so if the bees' abdomens are empty, they must have pretty massive thoraces (and mandibles)!

They can. Look at a wasp close up. There is nothing to eat there. They also are very tough and I have had mantids fail to bite through them. Bees/wasps are not that great of a food anyways.

 

[PhilinYuma]

They can. Look at a wasp close up. There is nothing to eat there. They also are very tough and I have had mantids fail to bite through them. Bees/wasps are not that great of a food anyways.

Don't tell my mantids that!

By the way, it had never occured to me, but I'm sure that catching 'em is a enough of a problem for some folks to put them off. Bashing at the dahlias with a butterfly net can'r do them much good, and if you use a jam jar, how do you get the bee into the pot?.

 

[asdsdf]

I've fed an mantid a wasp before, without mutilation. It was pretty "scary", cuz the wasp's abdomen was pulsating in the air, trying to sting my mantis.

I guess some mantids mouths aren't as strong as others. If mine can't bite through something, they attempt different angles until they can get a hold and crunch. This happens when they eat another mantis... :\ The carapace is very tough for some mantids(especially the raptorial arms). Anyways, if your mantis fails to bite through, they usually just skip that part and move on and then eventually get back to it, unless not hungry. And wasps may not have much "meat", but the bees here seem to have their abdomen filled with a yellowish liquid. (Nectar+innards?) Their combs also contain pollen, which is supposedly a good add-on for a mantis.

 

[jameslongo]

I've fed an mantid a wasp before, without mutilation. It was pretty "scary", cuz the wasp's abdomen was pulsating in the air, trying to sting my mantis. I guess some mantids mouths aren't as strong as others. If mine can't bite through something, they attempt different angles until they can get a hold and crunch. This happens when they eat another mantis... :\ The carapace is very tough for some mantids(especially the raptorial arms). Anyways, if your mantis fails to bite through, they usually just skip that part and move on and then eventually get back to it, unless not hungry. And wasps may not have much "meat", but the bees here seem to have their abdomen filled with a yellowish liquid. (Nectar+innards?) Their combs also contain pollen, which is supposedly a good add-on for a mantis.

Well, there are alot of different types of bees in the world...

Apis mellifera are haplodiploidal, eusocial animals, so only one or a few females (queens) actually get sexed and the rest of the colony find it favourable to raise the queen's spawn over their own. The workers that we see flying around have only the duty to forage, so their sex organs are greatly reduced. That's why the abdomens appear to be empty. Only when the queen's line fails, or when my old biology teacher Dr Ben Olroyd gets his meddling hands on a hive, do the sex organs spring back into action and the breeding spree for supremacy commences.

Bit off topic but interesting enough

 

[PhilinYuma]

So tell us, James, for how long have you had this preoccupation with insect genitalia?

The reproductive organs of an insect do not normally occupy a great part of its abdomen, though a gravid female's abdomen may fill with oocytes for a while: http://insects.about.com/od/morphology/ss/...alanatomy_6.htm

The fact is that for many flower mantids the bee is the prey of choice, something that cannot be said for waxworms or crickets. When a mantis eats a cricket, it leaves a pile of inedible debris on the bottom of the enclosure, including the hind legs; when it eats a bee, frequently the oinly evidence is two pairs of wings! In addition to the tissue and hemolymph protein that a bee provides, it contains pollen and nectar (that yellow stuff is insect blood, asdsdf. Nectar is colorless until dehydrated to honey) and in foraging bees, vitellogenin, which is not only rich in proteins, but also an antioxidant, which has to be a Good Thing!

Don't believe me; ask the mantis! Take a pot that contains a mantis that is used to taking bees and was last fed the day before. Pop a suitably sized roach in, followed by a cricket and then a bee and let the mantis decide! Any takers on the outcome?

 

[hibiscusmile]

I answered the poll but pretended u asked about the wasp and hornet family, I never have bees. I use one of those hangy wasp containers, I put some fruit in there and it catches quite a few. I then either put in fridge or in a small net bag I made and zip it up, take the lid off a little and use forceps to catch one and them give the mouth a little squeeze so it cant hurt my girls, usually dont bother with the stinger anymore, the head squeeze is enough for safety. ps It may not be that good for them, but they grab it faster than u can say Peanut butter :lol: ps excuse to poor smily.

 

[lectricblueyes]

I think this stuff is great to discuss and most of us could pontificate endlessly on the topic. For me, I have 3 feeders. Crickets, Fruit Flies, and recently... house flies. I've caught big beetles hanging out near lights or other wild stuff but never things that I think could harm a mantid in any way. If we diversify the diets of our mantids in order to promote health, why would you risk said health with something that could potentially harm the mantid? What am I missing?

I think the best ideas for enriching diet are the most simple. What your feeders eat, is what your mantids eat right? So, using stuff like pollen and calcium dust seem like great ideas. Also, I drop tiny bits of fruit into my fruit fly containers and with my crickets, they get fresh potato, romaine lettuce, all kinds of fruit pieces, and a small dish of ground up dog food. heck, if I go to subway for a $5-footlong I'll pick veggies right of the sandwich and dump them into the enclosure. I really like slicing up fresh potato and dumping that in there. The crickets eat it up and it's SOAKED in water so... they get filled up with lots of water... so much water sometimes I go to grab a cricket and it's got droplets of water coming out of it's mouth

Anyway, like Rick's general thoughts on most topics: simple, effective, efficient.

Told you it was easy to get verbose on this topic!

 

[PhilinYuma]

The main idea behind the poll, 'Lectric, was to see if there is a difference between warnings about "possible danger" from bees and members' actual experience. So far we have three members reporting one case of slight injury to a mantis, and one of those three bees was a wasp! :lol: A poll on injuries from crix would probably show a higher number of incidents, but folks feed many more crix than bees, so a comparison probably wouldn't be very valuable.

Catching bees is simple enough, once you have a method perfected. I walk my dog in the morning and take 5-10 mins to snag a dozen bees, tthen home I go.

Adding pollen (which I do automatically when I feed bees) is a great idea, but why calcium? To make their tiny bones stronger? This is an excellent idea if you are feeding flies and crix to herps, which is where the practice came from, but insects do not need a Ca supplement.

Slightly off topic, a similarly excellent practice in fish keeping, dechlorinating water, so that the fishes' gills are not injured, has been incorporated, needlessly, into mantis keeping. Mantids drink the water through their mouths, they don't inhale it through their spiracles, and are not at risk.

Addendum. I have noticed that four of the 23 folks who have participated so far, pushed the "vote" button too soon and invalidated their vote. There is an easy workaround for this (thanks for the idea, Rick!) and that is to just list your three answers in a post.

 

[PhilinYuma]

Well, this poll seems to be wrapped up, with 25 people trying to respond and 20 actually voting. I had to remove Hibiscusmile's vote because it was about wasps, not bees (sorry Rebecca! I'm going to have another poll soon on wasps, hornets, very large mosquitoes and F/A-18s) and added in Rick's, so the final numbers are't quite the same as in the poll.

75% said that they feed bees either regularly or occasionally, which was much higher than I had expected, and over 20% did not do so because they feared harm to their mantids. They should be heartened by the fact that no one's mantids had had a fatal encounter with a bee, and no one had had more than one mild injury (16%). The risk doesn't appear to be any greater than feeding crickets, though even with another poll, it would be hard to make a meaningful comparison. Many more people feed many more crix to their mantids, and injuries seem to occur when a number have been introduced to an enclosure at once and are still frisking around when a nymph molts.

Thank you for participating!

 

[bassist]

I've caught big beetles hanging out near lights or other wild stuff but never things that I think could harm a mantid in any way. If we diversify the diets of our mantids in order to promote health, why would you risk said health with something that could potentially harm the mantid? What am I missing?

Mantids have those raptoral arms for a reason they can handle most other invertebrates. I feed my mantids: fruit flies, house flies, blue bottles, crane flies(also called mosquito eaters), dragonflies, beetles, bees, wasps, spiders, grasshoppers, mealworms, mosquitos, moths, butterflies basically anything I find that I believe the mantis can handle never really had a problem with a feeder attacking the mantis.

 

[hibiscusmile]

So, I tell the truth and just like that, u remove me! humpt! but I forgive u, and next time I shall lie

 

[OGIGA]

So is there an option for "No, due to other reasons"? I don't do it because I don't run into them very much.

Just a comment about mandibles... I realized that mealworms have mandibles and they would bite a mantis while being held.

 

[yeatzee]

I feed bees every chance I get...... same with butter flies (Assuming its not endangered), wasps, hornets, beetles, spiders, and the list goes on and on. Bees don't get any special treatment from me

edit: or my mantids :lol:

(I feed everything as is btw)

 

[hibiscusmile]

The superworms do, dont know bout mealworms.