365 Project, Day 75
Here is my day seventy-five submission to my 365Project:
"Bees do have a smell, you know, and if they don't they should, for their feet are dusted with spices from a million flowers."
-Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine
(You can see the clumps of pollen on this guy's rear leg!)
Fun fact of the day:
20,000 plant species, including ones we know well like tomatoes, potatoes and cranberries, offer pollen (rather than the nectar that species like hummingbirds eat) as food. This pollen is tucked deep inside special tubes and only certain insects, including bumblebees, can get the pollen out. To do this the pollinator (the bees) grab the tube with its jaws and starts to vibrate hundreds of times a second. These resonating vibrations loosen the pollen inside the tubes which in turn gets blasted out and covers the bee with pollen. Then when the bee goes to a flower on another plant this pollen fertilizes that plant.
Read the New York Times article on Unraveling the Pollinating Secret's of Bee's Buzz including an animation of the vibrating bee loosening the pollen here.
Here are some more photos from my little photo session around Beacon Hill Park, Victoria:
"Bees do have a smell, you know, and if they don't they should, for their feet are dusted with spices from a million flowers."
-Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine
(You can see the clumps of pollen on this guy's rear leg!)
Fun fact of the day:
20,000 plant species, including ones we know well like tomatoes, potatoes and cranberries, offer pollen (rather than the nectar that species like hummingbirds eat) as food. This pollen is tucked deep inside special tubes and only certain insects, including bumblebees, can get the pollen out. To do this the pollinator (the bees) grab the tube with its jaws and starts to vibrate hundreds of times a second. These resonating vibrations loosen the pollen inside the tubes which in turn gets blasted out and covers the bee with pollen. Then when the bee goes to a flower on another plant this pollen fertilizes that plant.
Read the New York Times article on Unraveling the Pollinating Secret's of Bee's Buzz including an animation of the vibrating bee loosening the pollen here.
Here are some more photos from my little photo session around Beacon Hill Park, Victoria:
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