{"id":101730,"date":"2021-08-27T06:00:38","date_gmt":"2021-08-27T12:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=101730"},"modified":"2021-08-27T06:31:47","modified_gmt":"2021-08-27T12:31:47","slug":"honey-bee-pollen-baskets-packed-to-the-popping-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2021\/08\/27\/honey-bee-pollen-baskets-packed-to-the-popping-point\/","title":{"rendered":"Honey Bee Pollen Baskets – Packed To The Popping Point"},"content":{"rendered":"

I wasn’t impressed with most of the bird photos I took yesterday morning but I thought these honey bee photos were pretty interesting.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender<\/em><\/p>\n

I’d actually been trying to photograph chickadees on the Common Mullein spikes but I could never get any clear shots of them. It was then that I noticed this honey bee with her pollen baskets (corbicula) so full as to almost look like she was carrying basketballs between her legs. Honey bees can carry up to half their own weight in pollen in their baskets and this industrious little lady was certainly pushing that limit.<\/p>\n

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Not only were her baskets full to overflowing, much of her body was covered with pollen including her compound eyes. As one whose eyes are extremely sensitive to even the tiniest bit of foreign matter, just looking at this photo makes my eyes water.<\/p>\n

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1\/5000, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender<\/em><\/p>\n

It may not look like it but this is the same bee just a few seconds later. This perspective gives us a look at both baskets and the original source of the pollen – the anthers at the ends of the long filaments of the flower’s stamens.<\/p>\n

Honey bees moisten the dry pollen as it’s being packed into the baskets. Moistening the pollen changes its color which accounts for the different color of the pollen in the baskets as compared to its color on the anthers. The color of the pollen in the baskets can actually help identify its original source.<\/p>\n

Yeah I know, for most of my readers there’s nothing new here. Every school kid learned (or should have learned) about honeybees as a student. But I think it’s interesting to see the small details documented in quality photos that can be carefully perused.<\/p>\n

Bees and other pollinators – what would we do without them?<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wasn’t impressed with most of the bird photos I took yesterday morning but I thought these honey bee photos were pretty interesting.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":101731,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8,5928],"tags":[5925,5924,5923,5926,5927,3545,311],"class_list":["post-101730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ecology-and-environment","category-honey-bees","tag-common-mullein-flowers","tag-corbicula","tag-honey-bee","tag-how-much-weight-can-honey-bees-carry","tag-macro-photography","tag-pollen-baskets","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/honey-bee-7025-big-crop-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-qsO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101730"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101754,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101730\/revisions\/101754"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}