Nice to See Rozanne Again!

Always a challenge to shoot bees on geraniums. But I sure like to. This is one of my favorite flowers. They seem so optimistic to me…and they persist for so long (blooming, not the individual blossoms). They do, though, tend to sprawl and wander and look a little ratty if left to their own program. The bees love them, though. And the blossoms themselves are really pretty.

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Buzzalope

Seriously. Look at the faux antennae/antlers. Looking forward to this geranium blooming again.

More flurries today. Just swirling around, not sticking. Thought the light and weather might be great yesterday to go photograph wild mustangs on the west desert yesterday. Roads thick with mud and the sun blasting down. Go figure ;). Great to get out and shoot, though. Hoping to do that closer to home – with bees – soon.

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Honeybee on a White Geranium

Nice face and antennae on this one. She’s cute. This one’s from June last summer. As far as it goes, the honeybees are really fond of this one – seems moreso than any/all of the other geraniums in the yard. Two colors – one white and one kind of pink.

For the record: Geranium x cantabriginese – ‘Biokovo’ is the white and ‘Karmina’ is the pink. Get some. They’re a little wild, but the bees love them!

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Tiny Sweat Bee in Rozanne Today – Supercute!

This geranium’s blossoms are just a bit bigger than a U.S. quarter dollar coin. I think that’s about 24cm to the rest of the world. Two pics today. First of the entire blossom with the bee – for scale. Second is a tighter crop so that you can see the detail on the bee. Tiny, gorgeous little critter – with bonus beeneck. The sweat bees delight me.

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Into the Geranium (Rozanne, I think)

Most of the posts that I make on here are from the gardens here. And so you see a lot of the same flowers. Might get a little tedious, but it is (after all) a bee every day.

So something to notice – patterns. Every flower throws its pollen and provides its nectar in its own way. And the bees adapt their techniques a little to get at it. That one sedum (don’t recall its name) really requires some odd contortion for the bee to get at the good stuff – resulting in lots of shots of beeneck.

And the geranium has its own unique configuration. They really have to go down deep into the center to get it. Hard to shoot. But fun to see.

Also look at the blossom. It’s near the end of its own cycle. Color starting to bleach out. Not the prettiest thing, but interesting.

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Beeetongue in the Geranium

The bees were all over the geraniums yesterday. Think it’s Rozanne – the variety, I mean. So tough to shoot because the nectar, I guess, is where her tongue is. So getting a good angle on the shot is tough. But it’s about the only blossom on which I get this posture (or shape) consistently. And I think it’s a neat one. Pretty bee today…down to her extended tongue and pollen on her face and eye. Even a little bit of interesting focus on the geranium itself.

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A Russian(?) on Rozanne the Geranium

I think this dark one may be a Russian Honeybee – or at least have some Russian in it. They tend to be darker than the golden European ones. Guess they mix them sometimes, too, for heartiness. Tough to shoot bees on this geranium because the good stuff is deep inside. So there’s not much of an opportunity to get their faces when they’re working. Note the shadows of the anthers on the petals. Neat.

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