Coffee Break Sketching Challenge #20

Bee Collecting Pollen

The Coffee Break Sketching Challenge - Draw anything and everything during your coffee break.

I saw this wee bee out at his local wildflower supermarket collecting pollen from a foxglove. 

He was there with his buddy, buzzing about in the warm summer day, and to be quite honest, I was transfixed. 

There was something balletic, and graceful, yet workmanlike in the process. Last time I witnessed such fluidity, was when I was filming workmen fitting solar panels on a factory roof in Kintore, Aberdeen. Each person operating independently, but becoming part of a total 'machine'.

If you look closely at the wee bee's hind legs, you can see the little basket that he pops the pollen into. Just there on his tibia. The latin name for this pollen-basket is the 'corbicula' -  if it ever comes up in a pub quiz question. 

We really have to look after our bees. They are such hard wee workers keeping the eco-system going.

As Albert Einstein once posited, "Mankind will not survive the honeybees' disappearance for more than five years."

For more information about how we can help bees, click the button below.

Click Here For Bee Info

See ye tomorra, 

​Davy