Next Episode Sneak Peek - Honeybees Make Bread, Too (Patreon)

Honey bees make honey from nectar to fuel their flight – and our sweet tooth. But they also need pollen for protein. So they trap, brush and pack it into baskets on their legs to make a special food called bee bread.

When a bee lands on a flower, it nibbles and licks off the pollen, which sticks to its head. It wipes the pollen off its eyes and antennae with a brush on each of its front legs, using them in tandem like windshield wipers. It also cleans the pollen off its mouth part, and as it does this, it mixes it with some saliva and a little nectar or honey that it carries around in a kind of stomach called a crop. 

As it flies from bloom to bloom, the bee combs the pollen very quickly and moves it into baskets on its hind legs called corbiculae (core-BICK-you-lee). Each basket is made up of a concave section of the hind leg which is covered by longish hairs that bend over and around the pollen. The bee bends its back legs at the joint to squish the pollen into a ball, using the nectar or honey it added earlier to glue the pollen grains to each other.

They then carry it back to the hive and deposit it in cells next to the developing baby bees, called larvae. This stored pollen, known as bee bread, is the colony’s main source of protein. 

We hope you enjoy this first look at our newest episode. You can start sharing it with other science fans on Tuesday, May 7th from YouTube. Thanks!