Bees are the most important species in this world. If all bee populations disappeared from the world, it could be the end of the earth because the pollination process was going to stop completely and food production was never going to happen as expected. However, it is amazing to watch them have a good sleep on a flower. One of the best wild life photographers, “Joe Neely”, happened to capture adorable pictures of bees snuggling in a flower, which is very rare to witness by human eyes.
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Neely and his wife “Niccole” were searching for the poppy flower, and on their way, they saw some pink flowers, so they stopped to take some photos. Suddenly, she recognized an orange globe Mallow plant, which was hidden inside among all the other pink plants, and on that plant, bees were buzzing around the plant and flower, and some of them were inside the flower. They were not moving themselves.
Niccole fetched Neely and showed the bees, and they realized that they were not moving because they were sleeping inside the flower. It’s very rare to see bees sleeping, and these types of bees, “Diadasia diminuta,” are used to sleeping on flowers called globe mallows According to the US Department of Agriculture, the globe mallow bees play a really important major role in the flower reproduction process.
There is an interesting detail about bee sleep. “They don’t have eyelids, so you can’t just look for bees with their eyes closed,” Brandon Hopkins, a bee researcher at Washington State University, said. “If you carefully watch bees sleeping, scientists have found out that honey bees stop moving their antenna and they tend to fall over sideways.
There are over 20,000 known types of bees living on our planet. As an example, honey bees work day and night and they usually fall asleep in the hive before taking the other shift. Younger bees used to sleep less than older bees; they slept between thirty minutes and an hour and a half each night by taking little naps of about 15 to 30 seconds at a time.
These are the so-called “Diadasia diminuta” solitary bees. More than 95 percent of the over 16,000 bee species live solitary rather than communal lives; each female constructs and supplies her own nest without the assistance of other members of her species. In the wild, solitary bees have a lifespan of about a year, but we only get to see them for a few months of that time because the rest of their lives are spent developing through the egg, larval, and pupal phases. However, their numbers are declining, so we are seeing fewer of them. The decline of wild bees is caused by a variety of factors, including pesticide use, climate change, and newly imported diseases. Therefore, attempt to keep these tiny fellas indoors as spring approaches.
This is the best picture to prove that they are sleeping together and cuddling themselves. They even have flower resins all over them, which made the photograph perfect.