Robbing Nectar. Garden Bumblebee, Bombus hortorum, on Erica verticillata, Whorl Heath, Hortus Botanicus, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
in 2019 Anthony Hitchcock (1960-2020) published a wonderfully exciting overview of the 're-establishment' of this Erica, discovered in the Cape, South Africa, in 1767 but extinct in the wild from 1908 (Science and Actions for Species Protection: Noah’s Arks for the 21st Century. Proceedings of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences’ Proceedings of the Workshop of 13-14 May 2019, Chapter 46, eds. Jurgen von Braun, Thomas Kauffels, Peter Raven, Johannes Vogel and Marchello Sánchez Sorondo, Libreria Editrice Vaticana). There's now a shrub of it in the entirely renovated Glass House of the Hortus Botanicus of Amsterdam.
The photo shows a Garden Bumblebee 'stealing' nectar from one of Heath's pretty tubular flowers. Its tongue isn't long enough to access that sweetness through the tube. So it gnaws a tiny hole at the base of the flower that allows it to suck up nectar. I've earlier posted a similar phenomenon but on Aquilegia: www.flickr.com/photos/87453322@N00/47944011838/in/photoli.... Take a look at our Bee's proboscis.
Robbing Nectar. Garden Bumblebee, Bombus hortorum, on Erica verticillata, Whorl Heath, Hortus Botanicus, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
in 2019 Anthony Hitchcock (1960-2020) published a wonderfully exciting overview of the 're-establishment' of this Erica, discovered in the Cape, South Africa, in 1767 but extinct in the wild from 1908 (Science and Actions for Species Protection: Noah’s Arks for the 21st Century. Proceedings of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences’ Proceedings of the Workshop of 13-14 May 2019, Chapter 46, eds. Jurgen von Braun, Thomas Kauffels, Peter Raven, Johannes Vogel and Marchello Sánchez Sorondo, Libreria Editrice Vaticana). There's now a shrub of it in the entirely renovated Glass House of the Hortus Botanicus of Amsterdam.
The photo shows a Garden Bumblebee 'stealing' nectar from one of Heath's pretty tubular flowers. Its tongue isn't long enough to access that sweetness through the tube. So it gnaws a tiny hole at the base of the flower that allows it to suck up nectar. I've earlier posted a similar phenomenon but on Aquilegia: www.flickr.com/photos/87453322@N00/47944011838/in/photoli.... Take a look at our Bee's proboscis.