Janet Brien's photos with the keyword: pollenation

The flowers here were growing from a tree which had interesting stems which had vining characteristics. The Picture of the Day shows the leaves and vining. Do you know what this is? Very fragrant, these flowers come in white and also purple with orange throats. This bee was having a fine time and didn't mind me following it around to take pictures! :)

Another picture from our visit to Jacksonville. I was admiring this lovely flower when I noticed a tiny bee, no larger than 1/4", crawling around. Coneflowers are one of those fabulous blossoms which have "flowers within the flower", and here you can see this little bee examining one of them!

Can you say, "Fat Pants"? Because that's what we have goin' on here! This bee has been crawling all over flowers and collecting pollen as it goes, and instead of going back to the hive to empy his load, it's been caught by Janet's Fat Pants Cam! :D Ok, ok, silliness aside, what you're seeing on this bee is called "Pollen Baskets". As a bee becomes covered with pollen, it brushes it off with moistened forelegs, transferring it to the hind legs. There it is pressed and compacted into the baskets. It takes about 15-18 minutes for the average bee to fill its baskets before it returns to the hive to unload its precious cargo and go out for more. This pollen is then mixed with nectar and/or honey, and this is called bee pollen or bee bread. This "bread" is a bee colony's main source of protein. Isn't that interesting?! If you would like to know more about pollen baskets and bee bread, Wiki has a nice page here: Wiki: Pollen basket and here: Wiki: Bee bread By the way, I've uploaded two other pictures today and I hope you'll visit them too! Thanks to all of you who have visited and have left comments and favorites! I try to go to all of your pages within a day or two and is a highlight for me to see your beautiful photography! :)

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