Sunday, October 26, 2008

Bees Pollinating Brazilian Orchid

I love this video of Euglossine bees pollinating the brazilian orchid, Catasetum macrocarpum.



I highly recommend you check out Alex Popovkin's flickr account "A Russian in Brazil", especially to see the finished product of the bees hard work!
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2 comments:

  1. AnonymousOctober 27, 2008 at 2:00 AM

    I wonder how much nectar they have if one bee after another goes in there to collect some...

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  2. Naturalist on the Rio do NegroNovember 2, 2008 at 3:52 AM

    These male bees are not interested in nectar in the case of Cataseum, they're attracted primarily by odor. They collect some substance here to attract female bees for mating. See Dressler's paper (1968) in Evolution (http://www.jstor.org/pss/2406664).

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