Bumblebee legs

Combs and brushes

On the bumblebee’s legs, especially the hind legs, there are a range of combs and brushes. The female bee uses these to gather the pollen that sticks to her hair and body together into one mass which she then stores in her pollen baskets.

Pollen baskets
Workers and queens have two pollen baskets, one each on the outside surface of each hind leg. The pollen basket is easy to spot; when it is empty it is a large, flat shiny area with spiky hairs around the edge, and when it is full it contains pollen which is often yellow, orange or red.

The leg on the left was taken from a dead terrestris queen. The pollen basket, or corbicula, is seen at an angle, so it is actually wider than shown.

Below is the outside of the rear leg of a worker/queen bumblebee. The claws, coxa, trochanter and femur are fairly unspecialised, and typical of those found in many insects.

The outside of the tibia is concave, hairless and shiny when empty. It is bordered by a fringe of hairs, some of them are long and stiff. This forms the pollen basket or corbicula. Pollen is pressed on to the the pollen basket when it has been collected by the combs and brushes on the inside of the legs (see the drawings and photograph below).