A honey bee's 🐝 beautiful little legs

I spent several hours yesterday cutting out little honey bee legs.

Given that they are less than a quarter-inch in length and hard to handle, I use a laser cutter for greater precision.

After the legs are cut and flattened, I clean them in an ultrasonic cleaner to remove any burn marks or soot caused by the high temperatures in the cutting process. The tiny basket with the screen in the picture above is needed to contain the parts during the cleaning process or they simply float to the top of the solution and never submerge.

Each bee has six legs and to ensure that they don't get mixed up (sorting is tedious) the process is repeated with each size.