Bees With Tiny Buckets of Pollen

I see the bees carrying pollen attached to both their hind legs,
like little yellow buckets.

I learn bees work 6 to 8 hours finding the pollen and flying
it to their hives with those pollen pellets stuck to their legs.

I wonder how they got the kind of endurance that enables
them to fly with those pellets weighing 30% of their weight

and fly the six to eight hours daily with those heavy loads,
perhaps they start as bee young’uns and carrying only

10% of their weight and gradually work up to the 30%. And
I wonder if they get paid for their work.

Maybe they get paid piecemeal (pollenmeal?), or a
good hourly rate with overtime after 6 hours.

I hope they don’t do all that labor-intensive work for free.

Bob Boyd

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