Yesterday I saw something I'd never noticed before—honeybees on milkweed with lots of little yellow-and-black things, similar to maple keys, stuck on their feet! It turns out they are called pollinia and are sticky packages of pollen that are part of the milkweed flower. Flying insects visiting the milkweed pick up these structures and carry them to other plants.
I only saw them on honeybees, not the bumblebees, but they have absolutely been recorded with pollinia (see e. g. <https://www.texasento.net/pollinia.htm>), so I must not have been looking at enough.
This also explains why I sometimes find dead bees stuck in milkweed flowers. I just assumed they died of old age or something while on the job…but they had gotten stuck and were unable to break free!
This lil Monarch chonk has now eaten the second Aquatic Milkweed down to its stems, save for one section of it. Hungry and happy. Hoping there’s enough left for it to pupate and do its thing
Well look who’s here! It’s Asclepius syriaca, Common Milkweed, waking up. I also had the first dragonfly of the year, but they aren’t as easy to photograph. #NativePlants#milkweed#ClimateDiary