In Back of Purple. Apis mellifera, Honeybee, on Salvia sp., Sage, Amsterdam Zoo ARTIS, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Recently the great Amsterdam zoo ARTIS was also gazetted as a Botanical Garden, much to my joy! It always had many plants and flowerss, but now lots of them have been signposted as well (not this one, though, which is presumable a cultivar). It's wonderful to be able to alternate between the Hortus and the Zoo, only a couple of hundred metres away from each other.
The Zoo, of course, has many caged animals, but there are 'free in the air' ones as well. Here's a Honeybee scrounging for the last Autumn Nectar. She's on a Sage and flower's nectar is apparently not very accessible for her from the inside. So she's loading up from its backside between the sepals and the corolla, where there's nectar-seepage, or perhaps she's cutting into it.
It was very wet - see the raindrop - but a bit of Sunlight was all Honeybee needed for her expedition.
In Back of Purple. Apis mellifera, Honeybee, on Salvia sp., Sage, Amsterdam Zoo ARTIS, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Recently the great Amsterdam zoo ARTIS was also gazetted as a Botanical Garden, much to my joy! It always had many plants and flowerss, but now lots of them have been signposted as well (not this one, though, which is presumable a cultivar). It's wonderful to be able to alternate between the Hortus and the Zoo, only a couple of hundred metres away from each other.
The Zoo, of course, has many caged animals, but there are 'free in the air' ones as well. Here's a Honeybee scrounging for the last Autumn Nectar. She's on a Sage and flower's nectar is apparently not very accessible for her from the inside. So she's loading up from its backside between the sepals and the corolla, where there's nectar-seepage, or perhaps she's cutting into it.
It was very wet - see the raindrop - but a bit of Sunlight was all Honeybee needed for her expedition.