A honey bee colony is a superorganism built from three distinct castes — one queen, thousands of female workers and a seasonal population of male drones — each shaped differently for its role. This lab puts a labeled 3D specimen of each caste side by side with a living hive cutaway, so anatomy and colony structure can be explored together.
A worker bee's compound eyes each contain about 6,900 lenses, while a drone's eyes are so large they meet at the top of the head — an adaptation purely for detecting queens during mating flights.
A labeled 3D bee specimen you can switch between queen, worker and drone, set beside a living hive cutaway where colony population, caste ratio, brood-cycle speed and queen pheromone spread all respond live.
Head, thorax and abdomen are built and labeled differently for each caste — the queen's elongated egg-laying abdomen, the worker's pollen basket and barbed stinger, the drone's oversized eyes and stinger-less body — while the comb cutaway shows brood cells cycling from egg to capped pupa to adult.
Pick a caste to inspect its labeled anatomy on the pedestal. Adjust colony population and drone share to repopulate the flying cutaway, speed up the brood cycle, and toggle queen pheromone to see how its influence tints nearby workers.
Drone eyes are so enlarged that they meet at the top of the head — a single-purpose adaptation for spotting queens against the sky during high-altitude mating flights.