Posted in Bee-loving flowers, Natural Beekeeping, Videos, tagged Bee tossing, beekeeping, Flowering cherry tree with bees, pollinators, Poppy pollination by honeybees on April 10, 2013| 6 Comments »
Hey you, get out of there…
I was shooting video on the bees pollinating our flowering cherry tree when to my surprise I saw a bee actually pull another bee off a blossom.
You’re going down…
The bully bee then flew off, not even partaking of the nectar. So why did she pull the first one off?
Here’s a video capturing the play-by-play…
Here’s another example of bees interacting on a blossom
…and a bee brushing a different insect off the side of a crocus.
Posted in Bee-loving flowers, Gardening, Natural Beekeeping, Videos, tagged bee-loving flowers, beekeeping, Gardening, honey bees, macro, natural beekeeping, photography, pollinators, Poppy pollination by honeybees, vibrating stamen to get pollen, Wild pollinators on September 20, 2012| 16 Comments »
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 