home page	Evaporation Bees use evaporation to thermoregulate in high ambient temperatures, but not by sweating!  Bees will often fly with their tongues exposed, which is termed tongue lashing (Roberts and Harrison, 1998).  This exposes a moist body surface to the air.  As water evaporates from the bee's tongue, the body is cooled down by the heat lost in the process of evaporation. Apis mellifera is also known to carry nectar droplets between their mandibles (as shown with a water droplet in morphology), outside their body.  Bees that do this can maintain a thorax temperature and head temperature that is 1 to 2 degrees C lower than bees that do not carry nectar droplets (Roberts and Harrison, 1998).	photo used with permission, Copyright 2000, David L. Green, www.pollinator.com
morphology
physiology
thermoregulation
group behaviors
arctic bees
heat tolerance
works cited