Thursday 21 October 2021

Thousands of small lenses work together

Seen from the front, the head of the honeybee has a triangular shape, the head of the drone it is more round. On the head are the eyes, antennae and mouth parts. Important glands are located in the head and the main center of the nervous system: a nerve bud that serves as a brain.


Friday 15 October 2021

A switching station

Ganglia are part of the peripheral nervous system. The peripheral nervous system includes all nerves outside the central nervous system (bundles of long nerve shoots with supporting cells) and small centers of nerve cells the ganglia.

A ganglion is a combination of mainly cell bodies (ganglion cells) with the nucleus of the nerve cell surrounded by cytoplasm without further shoots. This cell body with the nucleus as its center forms the metabolic center of the cell and is sensitive to stimuli. Ganglia function as switching stations for nerve impulses.

Wednesday 6 October 2021

A pest from Africa

The southern green stinkbug (Nezara viridula) is a relatively new pest that originates from Ethiopia. The pest has a large number of host plants, but in horticulture this bug is mainly found in bell pepper cultivation. In the first instance, in The Netherlands, the southern green stink bug was only spotted at the end of the summer, but the bug has also shown itself earlier in the season in recent years.



Females lay around 30 to 130 eggs at a time. They do this in "glued together", yellow and white clusters at the bottom of the leaf. If they are just laid, they look like little pearls. Depending on the temperature, the eggs hatch after 4 days to 3 weeks and the empty eggs remain on the leaf. The nymphs initially stay together and do not yet affect the plant. They then go through different stages, each time shedding their skin, with each stage having a different appearance. In the fifth stage, the bugs begin to spread over the plant and eat it.