View allAll Photos Tagged Pollinators
Been Beezzzzy lately.
Hope you all are doing well.
May you all have a great Thursday and a wonderful weekend pollinating! :)
We had a beautiful sunny day here in Texas yesterday so I went out in my backyard searching for yellow for this week's Macro Mondays theme. The big cactus in the back of the lot is blooming and was attracting bees. I got this capture of a bee burrowed down in the flower doing what he does best... pollinating!
I'll be honest, I had no idea it was pollinator week until today! I genuinely just post pollinators when I see them, so... consider it a happy coincidence?
Take this little guy for example! This is a sweat bee, of the family Halictidae. These are a common sight in my area, and are absolutely breathtaking to see in person! Super small, yet COVERED in details that explode through a macro lens. Unfortunately, I caught this one in the middle of his workday, so those features were absolutely swallowed with pollen!
Sweat bees are ludicrously important for the pollination in my area. Not only are their generalist behaviors super benificial for mass pollination, but they are "buzz" pollinators! This means that they vibrate their flight muscles at high frequencies to knock the pollen loose when they visit flowers. This is SUPER important for plants like tomatoes and strawberries, and I have a few of both! Another cool fact is that, pound for pound, they are more effective than MANY of the pollinators you may first think of!
Take a closer look at this photo, and really let it sink in how much pollen he's got on him! This, combined with their usually frantic bursts of flight between different plants, provides picture-perfect pollination for pretty much all my plants!
They are especially important in pollinating our local wildflowers, such as this Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta)! I would post lots more of these guys, if I could!
...they're just too darn fast!
This shot was captured at 1:1 using my Vivitar (Komine) 90mm f2.8 Macro. This photo is uncropped. This bee-pollen basted buzzy boy is around 5mm long!
nicolas-hoizey.photo/p/pollination/
The reproduction by cross-pollination of many species depends on wild bees. With them, the survival of certain species of animals is also threatened (such as certain birds, butterflies, bumblebees...).
The bee collects pollen and nectar from the flower. Some of this nectar (which is located on the stamen) gets stuck to the bee's hairs during transport to another flower. When she lands on the other flower, this nectar is deposited on the stigma, or pistil (female reproductive organs). It is thanks to this that fertilization is possible, and that seeds can develop.
Unfortunately, the number of pollinators is decreasing more and more, especially in industrialized countries. And yet, there are 45% more hives worldwide in the last 50 years. But too many pesticides, plants rich in nectar that are becoming increasingly rare, especially in urban areas, and many other factors contribute to the decline of pollinator species year after year.
Arriving Pollinators
In the golden hum of wings lies the quiet architecture of survival. These honeybees, striped sentinels of the veld, weave invisible threads between flower and fruit, sustaining ecosystems with each delicate landing. Their choreography is not chaos but continuity the pulse of pollination, the heartbeat of biodiversity.
Canon 90D
Sigma 150-500
F6. 3
1/750
Auto ISO
South Africa
January 2026
#ken_stavrou #canonrsa #sigmaphoto_sa #NatGeoYourShot
Daylily (Hemerocallis lilioasphodelus) - Jefferson County, Kentucky.
Pollen coats the stamen of a daylily bloom.
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