77 



HOW POLLEN IS COLLECTED BY THE HONEY- 

 BEE AND BUMBLE-BEE. 



THE PART PLAYED IN THE PROCESS BY THE AURICLE. 



All are familiar with the masses of pollen — red, yellow 

 or white as a rule, but occasionally crimson, green, brown 

 or black — that the bees collect and carry home on their legs. 

 Catch a bee and you will see that the mass is attached to 

 the outer side of a certain joint, namely the tibia or shank 

 (i, Fig. 37) of the hind legs. The outer side of this joint 

 has its surface smooth and nearly flat. Surrounding it is a 

 wall of stiff bristles (9, 9) which hold in the pollen in the 

 same way that the stakes that the farmer places round his 

 wagon hold in a load of hay. This pollen basket was called 

 by Kirby the cofbicula. 



Let us now turn our attention to the next joint below the 

 tibia, namely the metatatsus.* (2, Fig. 37). This joint 

 which mav be described as a rectangular plate, has its upper 

 basal corner produced into a peculiar ear-like process (5, 

 Fig- 37)> which Kirby called the atificle. The function 

 of the auricle appears never to have been closely studied, 

 though Kirby, on page 210 of his Monografhia Afum 

 Anglice, vol. L, published in 1802, suspected that it assisted 

 in "kneading the pollen grains into a paste." Subsequently, 

 however, its use in the honey-bee came to be regarded as 

 forming with the end of the tibia, which is shaped to receive 

 it, a pair of pincers to seize and remove the wax scales that 

 form on the underside of the abdomen and this function is 

 assigned to it in several of the present-day text-books on the 

 honey-bee. In 1911, feeling dissatisfied with this explana- 

 tion, more particularly because the wax of the bumble-bee, 

 which also possesses the auricle, is soft and sticky, I 

 examined the auricle and the adjoining parts in a worker 

 bumble-bee of the common British species B. ruderatus that 

 had been captured in the act of collecting pollen, and I 

 found that the space between the auricle and the end of the 



• Called also the planfci (Kirby), and the basitarsus (Cockerell). Tliis 

 ia really the first jomt of the foot. 



