STRUCTURE OF A BEE 



33 



Lub'bock tested bees and wasps to see how many trips they made 

 daily from their homes to the flowers, and found that a wasp went 

 out on 1 16 visits during a work- 

 femur 



Coxa Coxd^ 



Trocbsnfer 



Trochankr 

 Coxa I ^fmur 



tfibia 

 Trochankr 



Tarsus, 5 parh 

 Left froni le§ Middle le^ hind le^ 



Legs of a bee. 



Outer 

 pigment I 

 cell- 



ing day of 16 hours, while a bee 



made almost as many visits 



and worked almost as long as 



the wasp. It is evident that 



in the course of so many trips 



to the fields a bee must light 



on hundreds of flowers. 



Adaptations in a Bee. — When 



a plant or animal structure is 



fitted to do a certain kind of 



work, we say it is adapted to do that work. If we look closely 



at a bee, we find the body and legs more or less covered with tiny 



hairs, many of them branched. The joints in the legs of the bee 



adapt it for complicated movements ; the 

 arrangement of stiff hairs along the edge 

 of a concavity in one of the joints of the 

 hindmost pair forms a structure called 

 the pollen basket, adapted to hold pollen. 

 Bees collect pollen and force it into this 

 concavity by means of a pollen press (us- 

 ually called the wax shears) located be- 

 tween the tibia and metatar'sus of the hind 

 pair of legs. (See figure above.) Pol- 

 len obtained by the bee in this way is 

 taken to the hive to be used as food. But 

 while the insect is gathering pollen for 

 itself, some is caught on the hairs and 

 other projections on the body or legs and 

 is carried from flower to flower. The 

 value of this to a flower we shall see later. 

 The Sight of the Bumblebee. — The 

 large eyes located on the sides of the head 

 are made up of a large number of little 



units, called ommatid'ia (sing, ommatidium) , each one of which is 



considered to be a very simple eye. The large eyes are therefore 



-Crystalline lens 

 -Crystalline cone 



Xiorneal pigment 

 cell 



■Retinal cell 

 Nucleus 



"-Nerve 



The compound eye is made 

 of many units, each called an 

 ommatidium. 



