Bumblebees get a grip

Bumblebees are quite conspicuous in the garden. They are big, bright and loud. Because they don't really seem that good at flying they tend to bumble around the flower they are trying to land on. I want to let you into a secret. They can fly with great skill but their problem is landing. The feet of a Bumblebee consist of a pair of spikes that are supposed to grapple the plant, but due to the size of the Bumblebee it has trouble getting a grip. Here seen in ultra ultra slow motion through the bigascope is a male Red Tailed Bumblebee or Bombus lapidarius struggling to get onto a leaf. Seen this way the bumblebee kind of looks like an overweight mountain climber. The Bee at the very end of the clip is a Female White Tailed Bumblebee or Bombus lucorum

The music used in this video is royalty free.

I suppose the next question is, what is all the fuss about? Well, bees pollinate plants like no other insect. In this country the efforts of bees are worth about a billion pounds. In the US that number is around 15 billion dollars. If they organised themselves a bit better in two years bees could pay for their own Apollo space program.

This picture, taken through my ultra bigascope (bigascope+microscope), shows the microscopic pollen grains of Marsh Woundwort. Ever since the cretaceous period, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, plants have been producing pollen to stick to bees. Bees don't even know that this is happening, all they think about whilst drinking the sugary nectar is "Wow, free food". There is no such thing as a free lunch.