Busy Bee. Honeybee, Apis mellifera, on Augustine's Rhododendron, Rhododendron augustinii, Hortus Botanicus, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Honeybees 'flap' their wings about 250 (!) times a second . Far too quickly for Olymp to show more of their flight than a rotor movement (see inset). In the main photo Apis has collected lots of pollen and is now delving for nectar in a flower of Augustine's Rhododendron.
Augustine Henry (1857-1930) - for whom William Botting Hemsley (1843-1924) named that flowering shrub - must've been busy as a Bee himself. He studied natural sciences and philosophy winning a Gold Medal and then went on to do a crash course in medicine. He didn't much want to enter 'boring' medical practice in some town in Great Britain or Ireland. Henry was encouraged to enter the British Custom Services. He quickly learned the rudiments of Chinese (Mandarin) and at the age of 24 was posted to Shanghai. Soon after he was sent to Yichang (Incanh) in Hubei, China. Life as a customs official there was boring, and Henry took up botany, first as a collector of plants. He was to become a versatile botanist who became an expert on Chinese plants and sent an enormous collection back to England. Among them this Rhododendron. Departing China (1900), Henry studied forestry in France and was appointed to the first readership in forestry at the university of Cambridge and in 1913 to the first chair in forestry in Dublin, Ireland. Busy Bee, indeed.
Busy Bee. Honeybee, Apis mellifera, on Augustine's Rhododendron, Rhododendron augustinii, Hortus Botanicus, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Honeybees 'flap' their wings about 250 (!) times a second . Far too quickly for Olymp to show more of their flight than a rotor movement (see inset). In the main photo Apis has collected lots of pollen and is now delving for nectar in a flower of Augustine's Rhododendron.
Augustine Henry (1857-1930) - for whom William Botting Hemsley (1843-1924) named that flowering shrub - must've been busy as a Bee himself. He studied natural sciences and philosophy winning a Gold Medal and then went on to do a crash course in medicine. He didn't much want to enter 'boring' medical practice in some town in Great Britain or Ireland. Henry was encouraged to enter the British Custom Services. He quickly learned the rudiments of Chinese (Mandarin) and at the age of 24 was posted to Shanghai. Soon after he was sent to Yichang (Incanh) in Hubei, China. Life as a customs official there was boring, and Henry took up botany, first as a collector of plants. He was to become a versatile botanist who became an expert on Chinese plants and sent an enormous collection back to England. Among them this Rhododendron. Departing China (1900), Henry studied forestry in France and was appointed to the first readership in forestry at the university of Cambridge and in 1913 to the first chair in forestry in Dublin, Ireland. Busy Bee, indeed.