Today’s letter C is for corbicula, or pollen basket. The corbicula (plural corbiculae, of course) is where honey bees place their pollen while foraging. It is part of the tibia on the hind legs of some female bees, and is essentially a hollow tube in the leg where the bee pushes pollen, along with a plate, or pollen press, When the bee flexes the leg, the pollen is pressed into the basket (and squishes out the sides a bit, too).
Continue readingMonth: October 2023
B is for Brain
Continuing our alphabet, today’s letter B is for bee brains. Most bees have a brain smaller than a grain of rice, yet they are able to perform complex tasks such as finding nectar and pollen. A honey bee can identify its nest mates and locate the exact same pebble on the edge of a stream over and over to gather a small bit of water.
Continue readingA is for Apiary
With the bees settling in for the winter, it is difficult to come up with a weekly topic. My first ever post here was a pun on the alphabet: A Bee Sees. So I thought it might be fun to do a weekly alphabet post, from A through Z.
Today is the letter A, for Apiary.
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Bees with eeb 