Look out below! This photo seems to show a bee peeing. But the stream shooting from the bee’s backside isn’t pee. It’s excess nectar—a sugary liquid collected from flowers as food.
Nectar is the primary source of energy for bees. Worker bees—all of which are female—gather the sweet fluid from flowers. At each stop, a bee unfurls its long, tube-like tongue. This organ, called a proboscis, works like a straw, allowing the bee to suck up nectar to bring back to its hive.
When a worker bee drinks nectar, the liquid fills an organ in the insect’s abdomen, called the honey stomach. But having a tummy that’s too full can weigh a bee down, making it harder for it to fly.
To lighten its load, the bee expels some of the liquid from its anus. (Bees excrete semi-solid waste in the form of uric acid, which exits through the same opening.) The bee pictured “is probably reducing her body weight to help with lift and flight,” says Cory Sheffield, a biologist at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum in Regina, Canada. With less nectar left inside the bee’s belly, the tiny insect was likely able to carry its remaining haul straight back to its hive to make into honey, explains Sheffield.
Though this behavior is not uncommon, catching it on camera certainly is. The act was caught by amateur photographer Mark Parrott in his garden in Grimsby, England. “He was set up to capture a fast-action shot at the right place and the right time,” says Sheffield.