Page 52 - The Miracle of the Honeybee

50 THE MIRACLE OF THE HONEYBEE

Thanks to their special mouthparts, hairy
bodies and pollen baskets, bees can col-
lect pollen in a far more productive
manner than other insects do. These pic-
tures show bees who have filled their
baskets with pollen.

lection and where they are used. Bees need a different system to collect
nectar from flowers from what they use for collecting pollen. That is be-
cause the location of nectar varies according to the plant’s structure. In
some plants, the nectar appears freely on the surface of the petals, and it is
no problems for bees to reach it. In the flowers of other species, however,
the nectar is much less accessible, being at the bottom of a long tube. Bees
therefore need to be able to descend deep to retrieve the nectar from those
regions.
This represents a difficulty for a great many insect species, though not
for bees, since they have a special organ known as the proboscis—an elon-
gated tubular mouthpart that allows them to reach nectar in the depths of

a flower. They also use their proboscis to drink honey and water. The pro-
boscis plays a vital role in exchanging foodstuffs among bees, and is also
used in licking up the secretions from the queen bee and distributing them
to the other bees. When not using its proboscis, a worker folds it up in a Z-
shaped pattern into a cavity beneath its mouth, and then opens it out