The pollen basket or corbicula (plural corbiculae) is part of the tibia on the hind legs of the female of certain species of . They use the structure in harvesting pollen and carrying it to the nest or hive where it is used as food by the colony.
Bee species with no pollen baskets have scopae, which fulfil a similar role.
Etymology
There was little formal description of the corbicula before
Carl Linnaeus explained the biological function of
pollen in the mid-18th century. In English the first edition of
Encyclopædia Britannica described the structure in 1771 without giving it any special name.
The second edition, 1777, refers to the corbicula simply as the "basket".
By 1802 William Kirby had introduced the
Neo-Latin term corbicula into English. He had borrowed it, with acknowledgement, from Réaumur. Like other Latin anatomical terms, this had the advantages of specificity, international acceptability, and culture neutrality.
By 1820 the term
pollen-basket seems to have gained acceptance in
beekeeping,
[ extracted in ] though a century later a compendium of entomological terminology recognised
pollen-plate and corbicula without including the term
pollen-basket.
[Smith, John. B. Explanation of terms used in entomology. Pub: Brooklyn Entomological Society 1906. May be downloaded from: [1]] A century later, the authors of "Imms" included only the terms scopa and corbicula in the index, with
pollen basket in the text.
Corbicula is a diminutive of corbis, a basket or pannier.[Ainsworth, Robert; Eds: Morell, Thomas; Carey, John | An Abridgment of Ainsworth's Latin Dictionary, 13th ed. | London 1834]
Structure and function
Bees in four tribes of the family
Apidae, subfamily
Apinae have corbiculae: the
,
Bombus,
, and
Euglossini.
[George Gordh, Gordon Gordh, David Headrick, A Dictionary of Entomology, Science, 2003; 1040 pages; p.713][ Bees (Hymenoptera: Apoidea: Apiformes) Encyclopedia of Entomology 2008. Vol. 2, pp. 419–434] The corbicula is a polished cavity surrounded by a fringe of hairs, into which the bee collects the pollen; most other bees possess a structure called the scopa, which is similar in function, but is a dense mass of branched hairs into which pollen is pressed, with pollen grains held in place in the narrow spaces between the hairs. A honey bee moistens the forelegs with its protruding tongue and brushes the
pollen that has collected on its head, body and forward appendages to the hind legs. The pollen is transferred to the pollen comb on the hind legs and then combed, pressed, compacted, and transferred to the corbicula on the outside surface of the tibia of the hind legs.
[Cedric Gillott, Entomology, Springer, 1995; 798 pages; p. 79]
In Apis species, a single hair functions as a pin that secures the middle of the pollen load. Either honey or nectar is used to moisten the dry pollen, producing the product known as bee pollen or bee bread. The mixing of the pollen with nectar or honey changes the color of the pollen. The color of the pollen can help identify the pollen source.[Dorothy Hodges, The Pollen Loads of the Honeybee, published by Bee Research Association, 1952]
