10 facts about ants

1. Ants have six legs, each with three joints.
2. Nearly 13,000 different species of ants have been classified, and scientists estimate there are more than 20,000 species out there but we just don't know about all of them yet.
3. It is true that ants use their antennae for touching things, but their antennae also contain ants' sense of smell. The nose knows, eh? Or in this case, the antennae knows.
4. Ants typically live between 40 and 60 days.
5. Ants sometimes go to war, and on a massive scale. Whole colonies of ants have been witnessed going to battle against other colonies, sometimes leaving millions of dead ants behind.
6. The Amazon ant is sometimes called the pirate ant or the slave-taking ant. Why? Because these ants are known to attack other colonies of ants and take captives. These prisoner ants are returned to the home of the Amazon ants and put to work building and making food.
7. The largest ant colonies in the world are created by Argentine ants. Their colonies can stretch for hundreds of miles and can be made up of hundreds of different nests of ants.
8. Generally the most common ants found in houses are carpenter ants. They like damp wood, which is why they tend to migrate toward houses, especially after rain.
9. As far as science has ascertained so far, each colony of ants only has one queen. Scientists have yet to find a colony with more than one queen.
10. Some breeds of ants are actually known to herd other insects much in the way humans do cattle. Rarely are these insects killed for food. More often they are used to bring food, often sweets, back to the ants.

10 facts about the mosquito

1. Did you know it is only female mosquitoes who bit humans and animals for blood? It's true. And they don't actually drink or feed on the blood. The females need the blood to be able to produce eggs.
2. Mosquitoes actually eat sweets, mainly nectar and juices from plants.
3. Mosquito eggs are laid in standing water. When the eggs hatch, larva come forth that will eventually become pupae and then an adult mosquito.
4. In the wild, adult male mosquitoes can live up to three weeks, but most often only survive about a week. Adult female mosquitoes can live for as long as three months.
5. Scientists estimates there are more than 3,000 species of mosquitoes throughout the world.
6. During the lifetime of a female mosquito, she can have as many as 3,000 offspring.
7. Scientists have found that mosquitoes rarely travel further than one mile from where they are born.
8. The oldest fossil of a mosquito that resembles modern mosquitoes was found in a piece of amber in Canada. It is believed to be nearly 80 million years old.
9. Distant insect relatives to the mosquito are believed to have existed as long as 170 million years ago.
10. The word "mosquito" was first known to be used in English in 1583, though the word itself originates from the Spanish word "mosquito" which means "little fly."

10 facts about ladybugs

1. Ladybugs are called ladybugs only in North America, mainly in the United States. In other parts of the world, they are more commonly called ladybirds. They are also known as ladybeetles and ladybird beetles.
2. Their main food source is generally other insects, especially plant lice and plant parasites, though there are rare sub-species of ladybugs that eat plants.
3. These small insects are actually members of the beetle family.
4. Ladybugs have been known to effect wine and grape juices in a negative manner. How? When grapes are harvested, sometimes ladybugs are pulled into where the grapes are pressed. If there are a lot of ladybugs introduced into the wine or juice, there occurs what is known as "ladybug taint." Basically the wine or juice has an awful flavor.
5. Ladybugs secret a fluid from their joints that tastes bad to other creatures. This not only causes the "ladybird taint" mentioned above, but it's also a defensive mechanism to keep other creatures from eating ladybugs.
6. Ladybugs hibernate when winter comes along.
7. Ladybugs are actually born as a black larva. They eventually enter a pupal stage, much like butterflies, and when they emerge they have their colorful wings.
8. These insects beat their wings at 85 per seconds when flying.
9. The average life span of a ladybug in the wild is two to three years.
10. Ladybugs are often "farmed" or "harvested." Basically, some farmers breed ladybugs to create a large amount of ladybugs. Why? Because ladybugs eat other insects that are destructive to crops.

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10 facts about honey bees

1. While science recognizes about 20,000 different species of bees, there are only seven generally recognized honey bee species.
2. Female honey bees do all the work, thus are called workers. Then there's the queen bee. The male bees are drones, mainly used for reproductive purposes.
3. Honey bees are the only surviving insects from the genus Apis. There have been other insects in the genus Apis, but none survive to this day.
4. Science generally accepts that the ancestors of the honey bees first formed in Asia. The oldest known bee ancestor in the fossil record is a bee discovered preserved in amber in Burma; it is believed to be approximately 100 million years old.
5. Male honey bees, called drones, do not have stingers.
6. Africanized honey bees are not natural. They were created by accident in Brazil. They are often called killer bees because they tend to be more aggressive than other honey bees, but they do not survive cold weather well and seem to be more prone to disease.
7. Honey bees thrive best at about 80 degress Fahrenheit. Below 50 degrees Fahrenheit and honey bees will stop flying and return to their hive.
8. During winter and other cold weather spells, bees cluster together in the hive and shiver and flap their wings quickly in order to raise the inner hive temperature and to keep the queen warm.
9. Beeswax is secreted by worker bees, females, and used to build a bee comb.
10. Honey bees communicate mostly through what is often called a bee dance, basically moving around. Honey bees also communicate, but generally to a lesser extent, through pheromones and other bodily scents.