External Morphology and Anatomy of the Honey Bee
External morphology and anatomy questions ask you to link a structure to its function in the colony, not merely to label a diagram.
Head and mouthparts
The head carries two compound eyes, three ocelli, antennae and mouthparts. Workers and queens have 12 antennal segments; drones have 13. The worker's mouthparts form a proboscis with mandibles, galea and a hairy glossa for lapping nectar. Drones have shorter mouthparts and cannot forage.
Thorax, legs and wings
Three leg pairs have different jobs: the foreleg carries the antenna cleaner, the middle leg has a spur, and the hind leg carries the corbicula (pollen basket) in workers. Fore and hind wings are hooked together by hamuli for a single flight surface.
Abdomen and internal systems
The abdomen holds the crop (honey stomach), true stomach, wax glands, scent gland and sting. The sting is a modified ovipositor, barbed in workers and smooth in queens; drones have none. The dorsal vessel is the heart; tracheae and spiracles carry air. The nervous system includes the brain and ventral nerve cord.
Worked example
A bee returns to the hive with two yellow pollen loads on its hind legs. Reasoning: pollen is packed in the corbicula, a widened, hair-fringed hind tibia found only in workers. A drone lacks this structure and does not forage, so the specimen is a worker.
Traps
The honey stomach is a storage crop, not a digestive stomach. Wax glands are on abdominal sternites, not the head. Ocelli detect light intensity, not images. Confusing the queen's smooth sting with the worker's barbed sting is a common error.