In order to collect an image that would illustrate just how large a space the crop can occupy in the abdomen I had to make sure that the bee I was going to dissect had an engorged crop. This was achieved by smoking the bees heavily while collecting my specimens. Heavily smoking the bees causes them to gorge themselves on honey in preparation to abscond for fear that their hive is in danger.
When I got the specimens back in the lab I carefully peeled away the plates on the underside of the abdomen. There are 6 visible plates or segments of the worker’s abdomen, referred to as segments II to VII. The plates that make up the top segments of the abdomen are known as tergites. The tergites come together on the lateral sides of the abdomen to meet the sternites. The sternites form the plates on the underside of the abdomen. The tergites and sternites are joined together on the lateral sides of the abdomen by muscle tissue. I cut through several of the sternites from this particular bee exposing the enlarged honey stomach so that I could see how much of the abdomen cavity was dedicated to holding food. As you can see from the image the crop is capable of filling nearly 2/3 of the abdomen cavity with nectar or honey.