The Bees Spring Back!

You thought the winter was long?!? Think how the bees must feel. The whole colony has been confined to the hive since the day the temperature went below about 42 F. That was forever ago. So as the weather gets warmer, the bees begin to leave the hive to forage. The problem is that because the honey bees are not native to the Midwest they don't have a co-evolved relationship with the local flowers. This means that the bees are ready when the flowers are not! After long journeys looking for nectar and pollen the bees return in need of an energy boost. So how do you feed a bee anyway?

This picture answers that question. This is a feeder that gets filled with a 1:1 by mass sugar:water mixture. The bees take up the sugar water in the blue disc below the storage container. A nifty little system indeed.

The bees, as you might suspect, have the mouthparts of an animal that sucks up liquid. The image below is a nice, clear illustration of the basic parts.

The tube shaped tongue is labeled 'gls'. This image is from a website called honeybee.drawwing.org. Adam Tofilski's illustrations are well researched and communicate the beautiful structures of the honey bee.