Entry for Amazing Nature Contest: FREE TOPIC - #3/5/23 — Happy Bees in the Sun!

Spring is a lovely time of the year when the beauty of nature awakens after the long cold winter (depending on where you are)... I went outside in the sunshine with my camera to look at what's in the garden today, and decided to make an entry for the Amazing Nature Community's weekly "Amazing Nature Contest: FREE TOPIC - #3/5/23" challenge, organized by @bucipuci.

Bees!

Nature's little "busy bodies" are seemingly everywhere during the warmer months... and we humans depend on them to pollinate things so we can have flowers, fruits and other food.

It really is an amazing process... and bumblebees — the subject of today's photos — are also amazing. "Theoretically," they are not even supposed to be able to fly, but they are actually quite good flyers.

We have some purple flowers that seem very attractive to bees, and I tried to follow this particular bee... although that can actually be very challenging, because they seem to get quite "drunk" from the nectar of these flowers and buzz around at double-speed!

In the photo above, you can actually see how the yellow pollen from the flower is being transferred to the fine hairs on the bee's hindquarters.

And then it's off to another flower!

Speaking of "Amazing Nature," it's pretty spectacular how nature designed these flowers with stamens (that hold the yellow pollen) to be precisely the right shape and length to touch the bees on their behind!

As you can see, our little bee friend is now quite dusted up with pollen... which will then be deposited on a different flower or plant somewhere.

Of course, what you see here happens all the time, but we don't really see it because the movements of bees tend to be too quick and the scale on which it happens is very small.

These were the only good shots from about 120+, in total!

Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you enjoyed the pictures!

All images are our own, unless otherwise credited!