What special anatomical structures do the worker bee's front pair of legs have?

eliochel
Jan 26
1 min read

A worker uses her front pair of legs for many tasks but the front legs are specially designed to clean her antennae with bristles in a notch such that she can pull her antennae past them in order to brush particles off them. It's a built-in antennae cleaner! The arrow in the picture points to the notch into which the bee places her antenna to pull it through and past those bristles. Photo taken from Penn State Beekeeping 101 course.

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Bees are the only insect that makes a food that we eat.

Other insects we may use as food (entomophagy), eating their larvae or adults, but only bees make honey, a food both they and we eat.

Bees are the only insect that makes a food that we eat.

Other insects we may use as food (entomophagy), eating their larvae or adults, but only bees make honey, a food both they and we eat.

Bees "hear" with their legs.

It makes sense that bees would "hear" the vibrations we call sound waves with their antennae, but "hearing" with their legs? A group, of sensors on the bee's tibia, called the subgenual organ, pick up

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What special anatomical structures do the worker bee's front pair of legs have?

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