ADAPTATIONS IN A BEE 



89 



on the corolla of the flower. The row of dots in the tiger lily is 

 an example. 



Practical Exercise 11. Study a dead bee, to discover adaptations for 

 carrying pollen. Use diagram in text to help. Hand lenses are essential 

 and a compound microscope will be found useful. 



Adaptations in a bee. 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 com- 

 plicated 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 (usually called 

 the wax shears), located 

 between the two large 

 joints of the hind pair 

 of legs. Pollen ob- 

 tained 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 (see page 72) . 



Field Exercise. In any locality where flowers are abundant, try 

 to answer the following questions : How many bees visit the locality 

 in ten minutes? How many other insects alight on the flowers? 

 Do bees visit flowers of the same kind in succession, or fly from one 

 flower on a given plant to another on a plant of a different kind? If 

 the bee alights on a flower cluster, does it visit more than one flower in 

 the same cluster? How does a bee alight? Exactly what does the 

 bee do when it alights? Try to decide whether color or odor has the 

 most effect in attracting bees to flowers. 



The cross-pollination of flowers is not planned by the bee ; it is 

 simply an incident in the course of the food gathering. The bee 

 visits a large number of flowers of the same species during the 



collection of 

 pollen starts 



What part of the leg holds pollen ? 



aLthe return, 

 to the Trtive 



Why! 



