SOLITARY AND SOCIAL BEES 



legs which may be considerably broadened so as to make a 

 pollen-carrying device; in other bees most of the pollen is 

 carried by hairs on the underside of the abdomen. The tongue 

 is nearly always more or less lengthened and is sometimes 

 as long as the body. This enables the bee to reach to the 

 bottom of the nectary of flowers and to extract the sweet 

 liquid. This liquid, the nectar, is stored in the bee's crop 

 during the journey back. Here it is partially digested, so 

 that it becomes honey when stored. Solitary bees put a 

 mixture of pollen and honey in each cell before laying an 

 egg in it. Only social species such as humble bees and honey 

 bees store the two separately. 



BEES AND FLOWERS 



It is well-known that the visits of bees benefit the flower 

 by transferring pollen (male cells) from one flower to fer- 

 tilise the female cells of another flower of the same species. 

 The nectar acts essentially as a bait to attract the insects, 

 and the insects pollinate the flower while raiding it. For many 

 flowers, bees are the most important pollinating agents, 

 chiefly because of their methodical behaviour and of their 

 long tongues. As will be described later for clover, a crop 

 may fail to set seed if the right kind of bee is absent. 



An insect looking after a nest has to work harder than one 

 which is merely feeding itself, like a butterfly or a fly. Thus 

 bees usually fly in a more or less regular way from one flower 

 to another, mostly keeping to one species on each journey 

 and returning to the nest only when they have a full load. 

 This can be shown sometimes by direct observation of 

 individual bees; or, again, it is often possible to identify the 

 pollen of different species of flower and to analyse the pollen 

 loads brought home by bees, as has been done by V. H. 

 Chambers. In the honey bee, individual workers have been 



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