Bees and Humans

¹ Bees are very important to humans for at least two reasons - pollination and honey. Several kinds of bees (such as honeybees and bumblebees) have one "pollen basket" on each of their hind legs. When bees make a brief stop on one flower to suck nectar with their long tongues, their hairy hind legs pick up grains of pollen from the stamen (the male pollen-producing part of a flower). Then, bees use "combs" or "pollen brushes", located on the lower part of their legs, to gather all the pollen grains into one mass. They store it in their pollen baskets. When bees fly from one flower to another, some of the pollen grains that they have collected get rubbed off on flowers that they are visiting. These rubbed off pollen grains help fertilize flowers. This pollination results in producing better crops as well as seeds and fruits.

² As bees have their pollen baskets filled up, they fly back to their nests, called colonies. There they unload their collections of pollen and nectar. Nectar? That's right! When bees suck nectar from flowers, they do not digest it. Instead, they mix nectar with their saliva and store the mixture in their honey sacs. Once they reach home, they regurgitate (throw up) the mixture from their honey sacs. After one bee regurgitates the mixture, another bee sucks it up, adds her saliva, and regurgitates it again. This is repeated until the nectar turns into .....
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