Walk around of the honey bee, Apis mellifera Linnaeus, 1758 by Safari LTD for their Incredible Creatures line, originally released in 2006. What is surprising about this figure is that it is the ONLY insect to ever be released in the Incredible Creatures line, and it would be the only terrestrial arthropod if not for the recent sinking of the old Hidden Kingdom line into the IC line (of course, the only remaining figures in that line are the monarch, black widow, orange-kneed tarantula, and revamped scorpion). It amazes me that the largest groups of animals have been so underrepresented in the IC line! My hopes is that sinking the HK figures into the IC line might revitalize this group by Safari.
This figure is 11.0 cm long, for a scale of 9:1-7.3:1 for an average-sized worker. The form of the eyes and presence of a stinger suggests a worker bee. The detail is fairly nice but still comes off as ‘generic’ like so many bin-style figures. The thorax is denuded on top, which is not uncommon for workers who have been around a while. The hind tibiae are expanded but they didn’t sculpt a defined pollen basket. The wings are transparent but the wing venation is not correct (for a figure this size, they could have made the venation accurate if they so chose), but then again, what company outside of Japan would go to the trouble of having accurate wing venation?
In 2018 I went to the Loveland Living Planet aquarium in Draper, UT where they have a living bee hive as one of their exhibits. I was pleasantly surprised to see the outside of the display was decorated with a lot of Safari Incredible Creatures honey bees!
