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What exactly is a honey bee? Or it may be more fun to explore, what all does a bee have going on that makes them so unique and so efficient as a "Super Organism"? What are their body parts? How do they develop into adults? What are the things that allow them to do all the cool things that they are able to do, despite all the challenges they face in today's world? In this section we'll dive deeper into some of the facts that are known about our furry little friends... (see more)
Honey Bees pass through four stages of development: egg, larva, pupa, and adult. We'll start with the eggs stage. The queen bee will lay upwards of two thousand eggs daily during the peak growing season - typically the spring in most areas. The younger worker bees have specific duties of cleaning and polishing the cells of the honeycomb to make them stile and ready for the queen to deposit a single eggs.
As the queen bee comes along looking for cells to lay into, she checks the size of the cell to determine if it will host a male (Drone bee) or female (worker bee or potential queen bee) by measuring the depth and width with her forelegs and inspects the cell for readiness. Once approved, she continues to lay an egg and based on the size of the cell knows whether to fertilize the egg, to produce a female, or not fertilize it if it is a larger cell and the offspring is to become a drone.
Pollen Baskets
Pollen Baskets
The little shelves on the bees back legs where they move the collected items, typically, but not always, pollen are called Corbiculae, or more commonly known as "Pollen Baskets". Bees store nectar (soon to be honey) in a special organ called the honey stomach or crop. This is a secondary "stomach" that is more like a storage compartment than an actual digestive stomach.
The "shelves" on the back legs of honey bees are called
pollen baskets, or corbiculae (singular: corbicula). These are specialized structures on the hind legs of female worker bees used for collecting and transporting pollen back to the hive.
To use the pollen basket, a bee:
Packs pollen from its body into a leg structure called a pollen comb.
Mixes the pollen with nectar or honey to create a moist pellet.
Transfers this pellet to the corbicula, which is a concave area on the outer surface of the tibia, framed by a fringe of stiff hairs that hold the pellet in place.
This process allows a bee to carry a significant load of pollen, which serves as a vital protein source for the colony.
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