Living With Common Variable Immune Deficiency and It's Autoimmune Friends
Bedecked in Christmas Green
I have quite a few tree twigs stuck among the Coleus plants and what between the plants having an occasional blossom still present, the hummingbird feeder, and the twigs to rest on, this little guy and an occasional friend or two that he tolerates, seem to spend quite a bit of time on my balcony of late. Especially when it’s raining. One day I’ll hopefully manage to get him in focus as well as the feeder. š
How can such a small creature gather so much pollen? About six years ago, researchers discovered something new about flowers and bees. Would you believe electric charges????? It turns out as a bee flies through the air, the friction of the bee’s body parts against the air causes the bee to have a slight positive charge. The flowers that attract bees have a slight negative charge. So when a bee lands on the flower, the bee’s body attracts the pollen to it and the pollen sticks! On February 22, 2013, NPR ran the spot “Honey It’s Electric: Bees Sense Charge On Flowers.”Ā Who knew?
Another fact: a bee can collect about 15 mg of pollen on a singe foraging trip. This is aboutĀ half its body weight,Ā and a bee has to collect pollen from about 1 million flowers to makeĀ 1 pound of honey.Ā
Bees are truly AMAZING creatures……….. and I’m glad I’m not a bee. It makes me tired just to think about it!
Look at this absolutely beautiful fellow. Who knew some butterflies had so many fine hairs near their body or such interesting looking eyes – as shown particularly clearly in the second photo! If anyone knows the name of this butterfly, please let me know in the comments.
Also, this is the first day of Fall, or Autumn, depending on your season name preference. I thought both the colors of the butterfly and the colors of the flowers were good choices for the season.
Please forgive my absence in reading/liking/commenting on all of your posts. I have traveled with the local branch of my family (older daughter, son-in-law and two grandkids) three times in six weeks, and I’m still completely and utterly exhausted. We were away a total of a week and a half, all those trips added together. They were absolutely grand, but that’s more travel than I’ve done in over 4 years, and I’m having trouble recovering. I’d do all of it again in a heartbeat (and almost certainly will), but during this recovery period I’m having difficulty doing much of anything beyond keeping up with posting and the necessary tasks of life. I will get back to regular reading of blogs eventually, but in the meantime, know that you all are most definitely not forgotten.
Here is my post for Macro Monday with the hope that you all will find beauty in it. It is from the weekend that I rented the macro lens, and is a photo of some budding flowers of one of the Coleus plants on my balcony. Enjoy. š
ā¤ Hannah
Moon and White Flower
A Helpful Visitor
