secret bee rituals

piggsy

I found something neat in my back yard last week. Pretty much all day long a variety of orange tail bees do a circuit of my native hibiscuses, stopping at every flower in turn and doing a strange little ritual while standing on the stamen, one after another, with at least dozens of bees participating at a time. Anyway, the pictures (all E-P5, Tamron 180mm 3.5 Macro, natural light @ iso400/1250):

piggsy

Hibiscus awakes to today's fresh hell.


Early morning, before the bugs work out breakfast is served.



The day's sticky leavings.

piggsy

Arrival.


Clearing off some bugs confusedly.


Cleaning.


Off to the next flower.



What this is presumably all in aid of - unfortunately even with the 180mm lens this was happening quite some way away and I didn't even think to switch to video. But you can get the idea of what's happening

piggsy

As you can see it's pretty filthy in there with a variety of flies and beetles tearing the flowers apart while it lasts. The bees land, hyperventilate, run to the back, attack the bugs at the back, turn around and stick their bottom in the bugs they just bit, lift their leg up and scrape the sides of the flower, stumble around and clear more bugs way from the sides while looking confused, clean themselves, then head off to the next one. There's never any obvious attempt to collect pollen or nectar with their tongue either. Occasionally the bees meet between flowers and do some kind of fight/mate/communication thing in midair with each other. This goes on for hours and hours every day. At the end of all this the flower is a shredded piece of gunk and it rolls itself up and pops off the stalk.

Lord Vetinari

Interesting stuff - sure is busy inside those flowers. Many solitary bees are territorial with both their own species and other insects.
Brian v.