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Rain falls and within seconds dried-up moss that's been virtually dead for decades unfurls in an explosion of green. The microscopic creatures living in the moss come out to feed. Scientists say the genes in these “resurrection plants” might one day protect crops from drought.

DEEP LOOK: a new ultra-HD (4K) short video series created by KQED San Francisco and presented by PBS Digital Studios. See the unseen at the very edge of our visible world. Get a new perspective on our place in the universe and meet extraordinary new friends. Explore big scientific mysteries by going incredibly small.

How does moss grow?

Mosses don’t have roots. Their porous cells absorb water like a sponge, whenever it’s available.

When there’s no rain, mosses dry out completely and stop photosynthesizing. That is, they stop using carbon dioxide and the light of the sun to grow. They’re virtually dead, reduced to a pile of chemicals, and can stay that way for years. Researchers have found dry, 100-year-old moss samples in a museum that came back to life when water was added.

Read an extended article on how scientists hope to use resurrection plants to create crops that can survive drought:

http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2015/06/2...

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More great Deep Look episodes:

Where Are the Ants Carrying All Those Leaves?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6oKJ...

What Happens When You Put a Hummingbird in a Wind Tunnel?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyqY6...

Pygmy Seahorses: Masters of Camouflage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3CtG...

See also another great video from the PBS Digital Studios!

It's Okay to Be Smart: Where Does the Smell of Rain Come From?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGcE5...

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Funding for Deep Look is provided in part by PBS Digital Studios and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Deep Look is a project of KQED Science, which is supported by HopeLab, The David B. Gold Foundation; S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation; The Dirk and Charlene Kabcenell Foundation; The Vadasz Family Foundation; Smart Family Foundation and the members of KQED.
#deeplook

Honey bees make honey from nectar to fuel their flight – and our sweet tooth. But they also need pollen for protein. So they trap, brush and pack it into baskets on their legs to make a special food called bee bread.

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DEEP LOOK is a ultra-HD (4K) short video series created by KQED San Francisco and presented by PBS Digital Studios. See the unseen at the very edge of our visible world. Explore big scientific mysteries by going incredibly small.

Spring means honey bees flitting from flower to flower. This frantic insect activity is essential to growing foods like almonds, raspberries and apples. Bees move pollen, making it possible for plants to grow the fruit and seeds they need to reproduce.




But honey bees don’t just move pollen from plant to plant. They also keep a lot for themselves. They carry it around in neat little balls, one on each of their hind legs. Collecting, packing and making pollen into something they can eat is a tough, intricate job that’s essential to the colony’s well-being.

Older female adult bees collect pollen and mix it with nectar or honey as they go along, then carry it back to the hive and deposit it in cells next to the developing baby bees, called larvae. This stored pollen, known as bee bread, is the colony’s main source of protein.




“You don’t have bees flying along snacking on pollen as they’re collecting it,” said Mark Carroll, an entomologist at the US Department of Agriculture’s Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Tucson. “This is the form of pollen that bees are eating.”

--- What is bee bread?
It’s the pollen that worker honey bees have collected, mixed with a little nectar or honey and stored within cells in the hive.




--- What is bee bread used for?
Bee bread is the main source of protein for adult bees and larvae. Young adult bees eat bee bread to make a liquid food similar to mammal’s milk that they feed to growing larvae; they also feed little bits of bee bread to older larvae.

--- How do honey bees use their pollen basket?
When a bee lands on a flower, it nibbles and licks off the pollen, which sticks to its head. It wipes the pollen off its eyes and antennae with a brush on each of its front legs, using them in tandem like windshield wipers. It also cleans the pollen off its mouth part, and as it does this, it mixes it with some saliva and a little nectar or honey that it carries around in a kind of stomach called a crop.
Then the bee uses brushes on its front, middle and hind legs to move the pollen, conveyor-belt style, front to middle to back. As it flies from bloom to bloom, the bee combs the pollen very quickly and moves it into baskets on its hind legs. Each pollen basket, called a corbicula, is a concave section of the hind leg covered by longish hairs that bend over and around the pollen.

---+ Read the entire article on KQED Science:
https://www.kqed.org/science/1940898/...

---+ Shoutout!
🏆Congratulations 🏆to spqr0a, A D2, James Peirce, Armageddonchampion, and Даниил Мерзликин for identifying what our worker bee was putting in a honeycomb cell (and why) - Bee Bread! See more on our Community Tab: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-3S...

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---+ About KQED

KQED, an NPR and PBS affiliate in San Francisco, CA, serves Northern California and beyond with a public-supported alternative to commercial TV, radio and web media.

Funding for Deep Look is provided in part by PBS Digital Studios. Deep Look is a project of KQED Science, which is also supported by the National Science Foundation, the S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation, the Dirk and Charlene Kabcenell Foundation, the Vadasz Family Foundation, the Fuhs Family Foundation, Campaign 21 and the members of KQED. #honeybees #bee bread #deeplook

We've got lots of cool updates to show you guys this week as we take you around our tegu breeding facility. We'll also give you a much asked for update on our Albino Tegus. Hope ya'll enjoy! OSU!