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 17 bees are hairy wasps DHJanzen101032.jpg high resolution
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| As mentioned above, phylogenetically speaking, bees are hairy wasps that use the hairs to collect pollen (and carry pollen as a surface contaminant) and feed pollen to their larvae rather than insects and other high protein-content foods (e.g., the social wasps you meet at a picnic normally prey on caterpillars and other insects that they carve up and take pieces of back to the nest for their larvae, and the solitary wasps commonly catch various kinds of insects that they sting, paralyze and take back to their solitary larvae as food, much as a bee takes pollen to its larva in a cell in a nest). Here the furry leg of this Ptiloglossa bee (lying on its back) is very visible and the pollen is collected by packing stuffing it among the hair. Some bees have, however, evolutionarily lost the hairs on their legs and stick masses of nectar-moistened pollen directly to the cuticle (see honey bee example below). | ||
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