Bees, Bees, Bees! (More pix below!)

Photography has become much more to me than just trying to take a good picture. I've turned my Flickr uploads into a sort of daily picture blog, and every image is a new opportunity to learn something new and to share a little bit of information about the subject with all of you!

Many different bees visit our property including the precious honey bee. I used to think those were the only one kind of bee, but in fact, there are over 20,000 known bee species in the world!! Isn't that amazing? The smallest bee is just 1/16" in size, and the largest is 1.5"! Did you know that some bees don't have stingers? Only female bees can sting because their stingers (ovipositors) are used to lay eggs as well as to sting with. However, the queen bee is the only female in a hive that lays eggs. The rest of the females are sterile, and are called worker bees. (Males are called drones.)

If you would like to know more about bees, Wiki has a very nice page here: Wiki: Bee