How many ommatidia make up the compound eye of a queen, a worker, and a drone?
- Queen: about 4’000; worker: about 5’000; drone: about 8’000.
- Queen: about 5’000; worker: about 4’000; drone: about 8’000.
- Queen: about 8’000; worker: about 4’000; drone: about 5’000.
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Correct answer: 1.
Queen: about 4’000; worker: about 5’000; drone: about 8’000.
Why?
The bee’s compound eyes are made up of numerous visual units called ommatidia. Each ommatidium captures a small part of the image and contributes to vision adapted to flight, orientation, and motion detection.
In the worker, the compound eyes have about 5’000 ommatidia per eye. This level of vision is useful for foraging, orientation, obstacle avoidance, and recognising landmarks in the environment.
The queen has fewer, about 4’000 per eye, because her life is less oriented toward foraging. The drone has more, about 8’000 per eye, which corresponds to its role during the mating flight, where detecting a queen in flight is decisive.
What to understand
A compound eye does not work like the human eye. It does not simply produce a ‘sharper’ image because it contains many ommatidia: it is above all very effective at perceiving movement, contrast, the orientation of light, and certain visual landmarks.
The differences between queen, worker, and drone reflect their functions in the colony. The worker must fly, search for flowers, and return to the hive; the drone must locate a queen in flight; the queen uses vision less in its daily life inside the colony.
Key takeaways
The numbers 4’000, 5’000, and 8’000 are indicative reference values per compound eye. They mainly show a functional difference between the castes and the sex of the bee.
The drone has the most developed compound eyes, which is consistent with its reproductive role during mating flights.