While I was out rummaging in the garden several mornings ago, I made a surprising discovery:
I found a bee asleep in one of my hollyhock blossoms.
You’ll have to take my word for it, I suppose. But you can kinda tell by the way she is deep inside the flower, and yet not gathering pollen.

I knew bees slept — I don’t know of a creature that doesn’t, except things like protozoans and bacteria and such.

But I had always assumed that bees go back to their hives to sleep.

By the time I took this photo of a huge bumblebee sleeping on a sunflower, the bees were beginning to warm up, and wake up. The next bee I saw was slowly flexing its abdomen to get the juices going. Then it took off.
When I went inside, I had to look up “bees sleeping in flowers” on the internet. Right? I mean it’s what you do. There I found this article on Bored Panda.https://www.boredpanda.com/bees-sleeping-flower-nature-wildlife-photography-joe-neely/?utm_source=duckduckgo&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=organic. Really great post! Interestingly, the scarlet globemallow that the bees there are curled up in is a close relative of hollyhocks. (On a photographic composition note, notice that the photographer kept zooming in on the bees until they filled the frame. Nice technique. I did that for two shots here, but held back a little for the other one because I wanted to show the bees in context.)
Must have been the equivalent of ‘Bee Thanksgiving’ with football games. 😄
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I’ve never considered that bees slept. As you said, obviously they do. I just never thought about it before. What a fun thing to have seen!
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You’re so smart…I would’ve assumed that bee had died. Really.
Beautiful photos, Amy. I was just telling my therapists that bees are kinda my ongoing soothing/therapy focus these days. This post fits right into all that.
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