The Worker Bee

With all this talk about worker bees, I thought it might be helpful to include a diagram of what a worker bee actually looks like. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the worker bees are the ones in charge of foraging for nectar and pollen, caring for larvae, seeking out new hive environments, and general maintenance of the hive. This diagram represents a worker bee. While most of the labeled parts are pretty self-explanatory, I've highlighted a few important ones:

• Antennae: Bees have a strong sense of smell to help them seek out food sources. They use the antennae to sense these sources. In addition to dancing, bees also communicate through pheromones. The queen, workers, and drones all use pheromones to communicate with each other. Some of the pheromone functions include attracting swarms, differentiating between larvae and pupae, creating alarm, and searching for nectar.
• Proboscis: This is the tube like tongue that allows worker bees to get nectar.
• Pollen Basket: These are on the worker bees back legs. When flying from flower to flower, the worker bee collects pollen to bring back to the hive. If you look closely at the photo below, you can see the orange pollen on the worker bees that are flying back into the hive.