Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Poached Egg Flower Brings in the Wee Bees


 These clove currants have beautiful flowers with deep nectaries.


The grade one worker bees find a centipede, but it's very hard to photograph. You can just see it slipping around the edge of the shovel.


The poached egg flowers are bringing in the bees. This is the third year this cover crop has seeded itself. Fantastic! Let's plant more of this flower: Limnanthes douglasii. Honey from this plant tastes like marshmallows.


And I spotted a small red cuckoo bee really tucking in to the nectar. These bees do not collect pollen because they trick other bees into feeding their babies. Can you see the nectar guides in the flower? I'd love to see a photo of this flower in UV light. I bet the nectar guides are even more prominent and the center of the flower appears quite dark in comparison to the outer edges of the petals.

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