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How to Measure the Length of a Bee

The United States has at least 3,500 species of bee and there are 25,000 known species worldwide. Many of these bees look very similar and are hard to distinguish from one another. If you want to identify a bee out of curiosity, to determine whether or not it is a pest, or to collect data on local wildlife, you often need to measure it for an accurate identification. An obstacle is that bees usually won't sit still long enough for you to find a ruler, let alone measure them. Of course, if the bee is dead, you won't have this problem: just measure from the tip of its head, ignoring the antennae, to the end of its abdomen. But if the bee is buzzing, you still can measure it: just take a photograph and take your measurements from the image.

Things You'll Need

Camera
Dime
Transparent metric ruler

Instructions

- 1
  Take several close-up photographs of the bee, preferably when it is on a clearly defined object, such as a flower.
- 2
  Place a metric ruler next to the object and take another photograph. If you don't have a metric ruler, place a coin next to or on top of the object.
- 3
  Compare a photograph of the bee with a photograph of the ruler on the same object to calculate the bee's length. For example if the bee was sitting on a 5-centimeter-wide flower and its body extended over half the width of the flower, the bee is 2.5 centimeters long. A dime is 1.79 centimeters long; from this measurement you can calculate the size of the object and the length of the bee.
- 4
  Place a clear ruler over the photograph to get a very accurate measurement. Remember to adjust for scale. If a 5-centimeter flower shows as 10 centimeters in the photograph, divide by half the measurement of the bee.

Insects & Science