The Behavior of the Honey Bee in Pollen CollectingCasteel, Dana Brackenridge
Science
The Behavior of the Honey Bee in Pollen Collecting
Casteel, Dana Brackenridge
Honeybee -- Behavior; Pollen
The sticky fluid which causes pollen grains to cohere is found upon
all of the legs, in the region of their brushes, although the pollen
combs and auricles of the hind legs are likely to show it in greatest
abundance, since nearly all of the pollen within each basket has
passed over the auricle, has been pressed upward and squeezed between
the auricle and the end of the tibia and the pollen mass above, and by
this compression has lost some of its fluid, which runs down over the
auricle and onto the combs of the planta. It is not necessary to
invoke any special method by which these areas receive their moisture.
The compressing action of the auricle squeezing heavily moistened
pollen upward into the basket is entirely sufficient to account for
the abundance of sticky fluid found in the neighborhood of each hind
tibio-tarsal joint. As has been noted, the brushes of the forelegs
acquire moisture directly by stroking over the proboscis and by
handling extremely moist pollen taken from the mouthparts. The
middle-leg brushes become moist by contact with the foreleg and
hind-leg brushes, probably also by touching the mouthparts themselves,
and by passing moist pollen backward. The hairy surface of the breast
is moistened by contact with the fore and mid leg brushes and with the
moist pollen which they bear.
The problem of the method of pollen moistening is somewhat more
complicated in the case of flowers which furnish an excessive supply.
Under such conditions the entire ventral surface of the collecting bee
becomes liberally sprinkled with pollen grains which either will be
removed and dropped or will be combed from the bristles and branching
hairs, kneaded into masses, transferred, and loaded. The question
naturally arises whether the movements here are the same as when the
plant yields but a small amount of pollen which is collected by the
mouthparts and anterior legs. In the opinion of the writer they are
essentially the same, except for the addition of cleansing movements,
executed chiefly by the middle and hind legs for the collection of
pollen which has fallen upon the thorax, upon the abdomen, and upon
the legs themselves. Indeed it is questionable as to just how much of
this plentiful supply of free pollen is really used in forming the
corbicular masses. Without doubt much of it falls from the bee and is
lost, and in cases where it is extremely abundant and the grains are
very small in size an appreciable amount still remains entangled among
the body-hairs when the bee returns to the hive. Yet it is also
evident that some of the dry pollen is mingled with the moistened
material which the mouthparts and forelegs acquire and together with
this is transferred to the baskets.
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