Bee Anatomy
Bees are highly specialized to perform many unique tasks. From building their hives to collecting nectar and pollen, the anatomy of a bee is absolutely fascinating and highlights the complexity of these organisms.
Go bee watching! This exploration will allow you to observe bees as their physiology allows them to carry out specific tasks. Start by printing out these coloring sheets from the Planet Bee Foundation.
See if you can observe a bee while it’s collecting pollen and nectar from a flower. Can you see how they collect pollen on their hind leg? How they collect nectar with their tongue (proboscis)? How they clean their antenna with a special antenna cleaner on their foreleg? How Many flowers do they stop at? How fast do they fly? Take note of your observations on these sheets and color in the features of the bee that you are able to identify!
While you’re out searching for bees in your local area, you may become curious about where they are going and what they are doing!! Here is a little background to inform your exploration and observations.
What makes honeybees so fascinating are their societies, which rely on the camaraderie of all the individual bees to create and manage the hive as well as reproduce. In the hive, bees have specific roles: the queen, workers, and drones. The queen is the only female that can reproduce and she lays eggs in designated cells in the hive. The worker bees are all females and they carry out the majority of the tasks in the have. The drones are male bees, who are necessary for reproduction. The queen, drones, and workers have different physiology in order to perform their separate roles.
It’s likely that you’ll spot a worker bee while you’re out and about! They are quite busy finding and collecting nectar and pollen for their hive. The queen bee will rarely leave the safety of the hive and will only do so for mating with drone bees. Drone bees will also spend time outside the hive, but mainly for mating and you will not find them collecting materials from flowers.
Worker Bee Anatomy
This page focuses on the anatomy of honeybees, but there are all sorts of bees that you could be observing from your local area. Although the basic anatomy will be similar throughout bee species, they will each have their own unique traits and characteristics. What types of bees can you find? Use this bee identification to help your exploration.
Here are four main features you can look for:
1) Eyes: Honeybees have two different types of eyes, the ocelli and compound eyes. The ocelli are three eyes located on the top of the head which detect light intensity, potentially to help with orientation. The compound eyes take up a large portion of the bees and can detect light, movement, and even airflow.
2) Antenna: The antenna is the nose of the bee. They are extremely sensitive especially for odors such as wax, nectar, and pollen. They also help with orientation and communication between bees!
3) Antenna Cleaner: On both of the forelegs, there is a notch specific for cleaning the bee’s antenna. This is important to make sure that their senses are not inhibited.
4) Pollen Basket (Corbicula): The outside of the hind leg has a “pollen basket” where the bees load pollen and propolis to carry to the hive. Often you can see the colorful pollen in bundles on their legs while they are collecting it from flowers!
You can find more about bee anatomy HERE.
Exploration and Communication
Once a worker bee has found a plentiful place to collect materials, how does she communicate this to the rest of the hive?? One of the most incredible bee discoveries was their ability to communicate specific locations through “dance.” They even have a dance floor in their hives!
Dances are crucial for worker bees to communicate the location of food and other materials. In these dances the worker bees use vibrations from rubbing their wings together and the samples and smells of the provisions from the foraging location. The round dance and the wagtail dance are the two common dances, with the round dance being used for locations closer to the hive the wagtail dance for provisions beyond 330ft. With these different types of dances in addition to the timing of vibrations, the number of waggles, orientation, and scents from the flowers, worker bees are able to communicate specific provision locations. This effective and fascinating communication system allows them to make foraging more efficient. These dances are complex and we still have a lot to learn and understand about them!
When trying to observe this activity in the hive, you will be able to find these dances taking place on the "dance floor" which is near the entrance of the hive. The worker bees will be dancing in certain patterns, the round dance or the wagtail dance, which looks like a figure eight. For the wagtail dance you are looking for comb vibration and waggles. Waggles are a wiggling motion along a "straight run" in the middle of the figure eight. The direction is given by the bees head in the orientation of the sun and distance is given by the number of waggles. Bees being recruited will be following the dance.