It is almost spring here, and the bees are out and about collecting pollen from the first flowers that have started to bloom. Even though these flowers should only start to bloom in a couple of weeks, they are here and the bees are loving it. This particular bush or plant is called the Honey euryops bush, Euryops virgineus and it is known for its small vibrant yellow flowers. Each year come spring the bush is filled with various insects. As it is still cold and not really spring, the only insects in them are the honey bees.
Above you can see the small pollen pellet on this honey bee. It is deep yellow because the pollen on these small flowers are yellow. Apparently, bees feed on these pollen pellets and they can carry about 30% of their body weight in pollen pellets back to the hive. I never knew this, I only recently found out about this fascinating topic. Since then, I have tried to capture some macro photographs of this. And here I have some for you today!
Once you know about this, it will become very apparent. You will look at bees differently. You will either notice a big pellet, a medium one, or a very small one. Your mind will then go something like: that bee is still early on its journey through all the pollen rich flowers! And the ones with big pellets will make you think: The journey back home with all that weight cannot be easy!
I wonder what it would taste like though. Maybe it is a super sweet but earthy snack, like when you bite into a flower. Some flowers are really delicious! But I think we should rather leave the flowers to the bees so that they can pollenate them for us.
In a previous post, I showcased the fuzzy looking carpenter bee They are slowly emerging from their winter slumber and returning to the garden. But the normal honey bees are by far the most active at the moment. They outnumber all of the other insects in the garden.
Here you can again see the pollen pellets. How awesome is nature not? This looks so awesome up close, thank you also for modern technology that helps us take these close up photographs.
With spring almost here, nature is getting herself ready to explode with a myriad of different color flowers. The yellow flowers here, and countless other color flowers are starting expose themselves to the warming sun. I think the insects and me included cannot wait for the explosion of colors.
But in any case, I hope you enjoyed the photographs of the common everyday honey bee. Once you start to look at things closer you come to realize just how fragile everything is. We need to take care of our world and the small creatures that co-inhabit earth. Spring is so close and I just want to color the world with different color flowers. It is my goal to plant as many flowering plants as possible to attract various insects into my garden. All of the photographs were taken with my Nikon D300 camera and 300mm Macro zoom lens. All of the musings are my own unless credited (in the hyperlinks). Stay safe!
