Life can be challenging for honey bees.
For instance, take the red bird of paradise flower.
These flowers have amazing long stamens.
See the red threadlike-structures towards the left. The bumps at the ends are the anthers that produce pollen.
Collecting that pollen from such a fragile structure can be a chore.
It requires some acrobatics, even with wings.
One honey bee is using other stamens as scaffolding of sorts.
Another tries a different approach.
It’s called the fly in and grab.
Grasp the anther.
And down it goes.
It would have been better as a video, but I saw a bunch of honey bees doing this.
It looked like a ride at an an amusement park. The stamen droops with the weight of the bee then springs up again when the bee lets go.
All in a day’s work, I guess.
