What Bees Eat

The whole food diet for bees

By Stephanie Pain12.04.2017

https://knowablemagazine.org/article/food-environment/2017/whole-food-diet-bees#:~:text=Bees%20feed%20on%20nectar%20and,baskets%E2%80%9D%20on%20their%20rear%20legs.

Bees feed on nectar and pollen collected by the foragers — older worker bees with beefy flight muscles. Some foragers gather nectar, which they store in an elastic pouch in the gut known as a “honey stomach”; others collect pollen grains, packing them in “baskets” on their rear legs. Loaded to capacity, foragers return to the colony where nectar-carriers pass their load to “receiver bees” to store as honey, while pollen-bearers offload their hauls into cells to form what’s known as bee bread. “Nurse bees” draw on both to keep the colony fed, and have the job of transforming pollen into royal jelly, which they feed to larvae and to the queen, drones and older worker bees.

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