Topic: POLLEN BASKET Difficulty: Moderate

A POLLEN BASKET is how a honey bee carries pollen back to the hive. The POLLEN BASKET is located on each of the back legs. When viewed under a microscope, you can see the POLLEN BASKET is a flattened section of the hind leg that is fringed with long, curved hairs. Only the worker bees have this feature because they are the only bees that collect pollen. As a bee visits flowers, they collect pollen all over their bodies. There is actually a small electrical charge difference between the bee and pollen, so the pollen actually sticks to the bee. You can see how this works yourself. Comb your hair several times and place the comb close to a tiny piece of paper towel. The paper towel will jump to and stick on the comb. Same thing happens to pollen when a honey bee goes inside a flower. As the bee is covered by pollen, it grooms itself with its fore and middle legs, pushing the pollen down to the hind legs and into the POLLEN BASKET. If you look carefully at the front of a bee hive you can easily see worker bees returning with full pollen baskets. Experienced beekeepers can often tell the type of flower the bee has been working by the color of the pollen in the POLLEN BASKET. The colors can range from bright orange or yellow, through reds and into the grays.

Lean more at… http://www.uni.illinois.edu/~stone2/Bee_anatomy.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollen_basket

Each row, column and 3x3 square must contain one of the puzzle’s letters. Use the following letters (upper case bold only) to solve the “BEE”-DOKU puzzle. P O L l E N B A S K e t (ie., POLENBASK)

P O A KN BL P E K A P L S P K A S E N K E L E B A

Solution:

ID: Beedoku _PollenBasket