Honey Bee Under The Microscope 🐝

I remember looking at a bee in class using a stereo microscope. This microscope allows you to view things in 3D close up. I wish I could have afforded both a stereo microscope and compound microscope but this will have to do. So to use a compound microscope to view a thicker/bigger specimen, I required a light source from up top. Here I just used a desk lamp.

Before looking at the specimen, I wanted to search up a bit about the parts of the bee so I could focus looking at those particular parts to see if we could find them. Also while I was watching a bee fly from flower to flower, I noticed it holding out what appeared to be bigger hind legs each time it reached a flower. Like a landing guide. Here is a recording of it, see if you can spot the hind legs coming together before each landing.

Because of this, I was more focused on the hind leg to see the structure of it. Upon searching the parts of the bee I noticed something labelled on the hind leg. It was a pollen basket. This was the first time I’ve heard of a pollen basket on a bee. Looking at the bee with the naked eye, you can see something on the hind leg. Let us look closer.

Picture Source

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Oh my, you can really see what is stuck to it's leg! Let us look at this pollen basket even closer.

Here I flipped the bee over so we can see the other side of the hind leg.

Oh can you see the end of the leg? It looks very alien like and sharp. How about we get a closer look.

I don't know about you, but that was kinda scary. But here is something that is even more scary. This is the underside of the bee's mouth. I am not too sure what these are, but they look like two big fangs.

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