A Saturday Afternoon Walk......

I finally have my computer back and working well again. It took the experts one week to identify the problems and even though I was not online during that week I was busy discovering the world and taking pictures as well. My sister came to visit for a few days and together we found some wonderful gardens and the native species living in those gardens.

This is a very beautiful Banksia whose flowers caught our attention.

Upon closer viewing the flowers were occupied by a number of bees that were collecting pollen. I loved every minute of standing there shooting pictures of the tiny workers. I never tier of looking at the beautiful colours that swirl and highlight the stamens and petals.

If you enlarge some of the photos one can imagine the paintbrush of an artist picking up the glorious array of colours that fill our gardens and national parks. How lucky are we to live in communities where we can find such beauty.

Do B A Good Bee......

"Aerodynamically the bumble bee shouldn't be able to fly, but the bumble bee doesn't know it, so it goes on flying anyway." ~Mary Kay Ash

I have finally located some bees that were motionless long enough for me to sit and watch them at work. The more I watch the more fascinated I have become with them. They are such diligent workers that not even my photo-taking disturbs them.

I have found out that there are two main types of bees in this area; bumble bees and honey-bees, but I have not worked out which are which just yet. Apparently bumble bees are much less aggressive than honey bees.

Generally they will not attack a human (thank god) unless their life is under threat. So if you do not wave your arms around wildly and instead stand calmly and let them smell that you are not a flower with pollen they will move gently away.

Apparently honey bees are not as amiable lol. Currently there are some poppies in the garden and to my amazement the bees are regular visitors. Because poppies are such an open flower it is easy to watch the changes taking place.

Daisies are another open-type flower that makes it easy to monitor bees in. The flower petals seem to attract the bees, which come along and actually take the nectar in the center of the flower.

If you stand and watch them patiently, you can actually see them sipping the nectar. While they do this they tread through the pollen which gets stuck on various parts of their bodies.

The bees then go to another flower and some of the original pollen gets transferred to the second flower. This was pollination taking place in front of me lol. The pollen was stuck on their bodies and legs and yet they continued undisturbed.

But have a look at the flower after the bee has left it and see the mess he/she makes, you can actually see where they have stompt through it. I once read that if we destroyed bees completely it would have a catostrophic effect on nature, beyond anything mankind could imagine; we would not survive.

"The pedigree of honey does not concern the bee, a clover, anytime, to him, is aristocracy". ~Emily Dickinson

Busy times for busy bees.....

Have you ever tried to photograph a bee? God it's hard, they don't keep still, not even for a second...and I thought that little children were bad!

Just when you think everything is set to snap...the bee moves yet again. So engrossed in what he is doing that he is oblivious to you.

I sat on the ground, perched my camera in readiness and waited.......and waited......and waited and just when I got tired and put the camera down for a rest...along came the bee.

So, determined that they wouldn't beat me I waited patiently yet again and finally along came a busy little bee. He didn't even lift his head from his pollen collecting. I felt like swatting him.

So he climbed in over the back of the flowers lol....if you search hard enough through the yellow flowers you will see his back......the little B!!!!!!!!