Bee Gymnastics

Today was bee macro day for me. The Adelaide Hills are a really good spot for bees with a plentiful pollen supply, especially in our garden. I had no problem getting lots of potential photos to blip.
Here are the 4 photos that just missed out.

 In spring with the Salvation Jane, Cape weed, Lavender and for todays blip, the bees were all over our echium. Then we'll move on to the various different gums in January.

Young bees are house bees, and they graduate to field bees as they get older. Field bees do all the foraging for nectar, pollen, water and propolis.

To make honey the bees evaporate the water reducing the water content of the nectar down to a little under 20%. The honey is then ripe and viscous as we know it.

There are four main varieties of introduced bees in Australia. The bees in our backyard are simply the common bee that is most prolific in the Adelaide Hills, the European honey bee (Apis mellifera). We do have a pure strain of Ligurian bees on Kangaroo Island, 30 miles away.

Pollen provides the protein which allows the bees to grow. Pollen is also required to stimulate the glands which produce the royal jelly for the queen and the young larvæ.