My Home Among The Hills

It was pretty nice last weekend and my bees were flying around to “clear the pipes”.  In addition to that task, they also groom the hive and remove any bees that had expired.  As I watched them bring out their dead, I thought it might be cool to dissect a bee under a microscope.  I don’t have a microscope with a camera attachment though.  I am, however,  a determined and fierce cheap-skate and I have a web cam. 

I gathered a few of the recently deceased bees and dissected and mounted various parts that I thought would be cool.    It took some messing around to get the focus right, but I was able to hold the webcam to the eye piece and capture some pictures.  Have a look at the shots and see if you can figure out what the parts are in each picture.  The answers are at the end.

pics from top to bottom:
-bee knee (a joint on the bee’s leg)
-bee toes (the very end of the leg)
-bee tongue (they have several)
-bee stinger (I have seen this after being in me…you can see the barbs then)
-bee wing
-girl hair (yeah, not a beepart , but a hair from Emily…she conditions!)