Yellow Flower & Bee

yellow flower

flower & small bee

small bee and flower

yellow flower closed up

Robber Bee info: Pollinators such as bees won't do it for nothing, so flowers provide a rather energy-expensive 'bribe'--the nectar. Obviously the flower doesn't 'want' to hand out nectar to insects that aren't good pollinators. In theory therefore they adapt to keep out the bad pollinators, and allow the good ones in. The good ones tend to be big hairy ones--they will catch the most pollen and spread it around. It's therefore quite common to see flowers with a long narrow trumpet shape--the nectaries (the bits that secrete the nectar) are way at the bottom of that. In order to get at the nectar the bee has to struggle down and stick it's long tongue down but is forced to rub pretty hard against the stamens. If you look down the trumpet of a flower like this you should see the stamens--the bits that produce the pollen--on the top side of the flower about half way down. In order to get to the nectar a large bee has to rub past this.  Among the various different species of bee there are those that have long tongues and those with short tongues. I can't pretend to be an expert on bees at all (I only ever worked on flies), but what you seem to have on your flower is a species of bee with a short tongue but strong mouthparts. Basically it's tongue is too short to get at the nectaries via the front door (I guess it would be regarded as a 'bad pollinator--maybe it isn't very hairy or whatever, I don't know). To get to the nectar therefore it bites through the petals and can lap up the nectar. Of course this is no use for the flower because the bee doesn't do any pollination for the flower.

http://www.dl-digital.com/closeup-09-02-bee.htm

No comments:

Post a Comment

LinkWithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...