[Pollinator] Fwd: Passion Flower and honey bees

[Peter Bernhardt]

Received this beautiful photo yesterday and thought you might enjoy it.
This comes from a garden in England where  passion flower vines remain
popular (read Tennyson's poem about Maude).  These honeybees are unlikely
to pollinate this flower if you compare the height of the bee to the
heights of the stigma lobes and the anthers but I think our apiculturists
will like it.

Peter
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Irene Palmer <i.a.palmer at talk21.com>
Date: Wed, Aug 3, 2016 at 11:48 AM
Subject: Passion Flower and honey bees
To: Peter Bernhardt <bernhap2 at slu.edu>, Retha Meier <rmeier3 at gmail.com>,
Grant Hazlehurst <granthazlehurst at msn.com>


Dear Peter and Retha,

I was admiring the flowers in a friend's garden this morning. We were
astonished to see a cluster of honey bees completely encircling the central
cup of a flower of Passiflora coerulea. There were no bees on any of the
other flowers. Any bee that did approach a flower, left almost instantly
and some found their way to the popular flower, which they crowded around
as if it was a drinking fountain. BY the time Alison got her camera a
couple of bees had left.

Have cc'd this to Grant for fun.

Best wishes,

Irene
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