Growing poppies is a long term affair. We planted these under lights in the house. After two to three weeks in a plastic bag to keep it moist, the very fine seeds have sprouted.
Poppies ready to be transplanted into bigger pots. The plants in the foreground are St. John’s Wort (Hypericum).
The poppy seed was planted in February. It is just now blooming in September. I think we’ll start earlier if we want poppies in spring or summer for the bees next year.
Here’s the beautiful result of our labor of love…
The poppy has finally opened up. I wonder when the bees will find it.
A couple of days after this first one opened up, we had a bee doing something strange (to me). It faced away from the center of the flower, beating her wings rapidly, vibrating the pollen off the stamen and onto her body. After getting a layer of purple pollen, she landed on the outside of the flower and groomed herself with her middle legs, pulling the pollen off her back and into her pollen baskets. It was incredible. I had my little pocket camera with me and got some video of it.
Adventures in Natural Beekeeping 
Fascinating video, thanks for sharing it with us! I’ve never seen this behaviour before.
I’ve never seen it either, but I’m a newbie and just sort of waking up to nature around me. Now I take the camera out every time I visit the garden, just in case there’s something moving. Trouble is, I can’t get much work done. 🙂
This is really beautiful…the poppy, the bee. The close-up video makes it so clear and gorgeous. Nicely done!
The bees and wind cooperated that day, but the big surprise was the bee doing her ‘beating wing thing’ while I was shooting the video. That was special!
Really beautiful!
ps: Don’t poppies reseed themselves?
I know that California Poppies reseed themselves. I planted these red ones (don’t know the name of them) from a store-bought package. Am tempted to buy some more and direct seed them if I can be convinced that the slugs won’t eat them.
really interesting blog!
That was one of the best bee videos I’ve ever seen I thought that they collected pollen by walking over the stamens. I’ve read that there is a slight electrical charge between the pollen and the bee that makes the gathering easier. Could have been Clarence Collison in Bee Culture. Not sure.
It looks like she checked you and your camera out when she left one flower. Like “Haven’t you got anything better to do?”
Well……I’ve got some printing deadlines, but I hope my customers understand what is more important.
Nice one. We’ve found that once you have a year of poppies then they self seed and start to pop up at the required time, around the garden. Could be diffrent for where you are, I scattered seed late Autumn. They started to grow going into winter then flowered mid to late spring.
I’m going to try that (scattering seeds) when they dry out a bit. It would be nice to see them in the spring. I’ll keep some for a backup plan too. (Plan bee.)
That is a great video. It looks like she is a new forager exhibiting learning behaviour and learning how best to collect pollen from poppies. Bees ‘learn’ a flower or two on each foraging flight and then only collect from those flowers on that day to save spending energy on ‘learning’ more flowers. I love when our bees bring home poppy pollen, it is usually bright blue on their legs. You’ve captured the colours here beautifully, thanks for sharing!
Bright blue? I’ve got to see that. Maybe I’ll find some blue poppy seeds to plant. That’s fascinating about bees ‘learning’ a flower. Could be that this individual bee figured it out on MY poppies. I’ve got to plant more next year. I want a BUNCH of different colors.
She spent all that time learning on my small handful of poppies, and they’re gone already. Next year (this autumn) I’m planting more. Any idea what kind of poppy that bright blue pollen was from?
Fantastic video