Be(e) – A lady well-laden with pollen

Take time to observe,

natural phenomena.

A gentle reminder,

Nature is the master,

we are not.

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When you see bees flitting about your garden, you might notice that some of them have orange or yellow clumps along their hind legs. Resembling tiny saddlebags, these bright spots of cargo are pollen baskets or corbiculae. These baskets are found in apid bees, including honey bees and bumblebees.

Pollen is loaded at the bottom of the pollen basket, so the pollen that has been pushed towards the top is from flowers the bumblebee visited earliest on her foraging trip. When a pollen basket is full it can weigh as much as 0.01 g and contain as much as 1,000,000 pollen grains. So for those of you who buy bee pollen to eat as a health supplement just think of the work that has gone into gathering it.

References:

https://www.treehugger.com/why-do-bees-have-pockets-4864396

https://www.bumblebee.org/bodyLegs.htm

http://www.gardening-for-wildlife.com/pollen-sacs.html

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