Saturday, May 18, 2013

Apple Trees Blooming and Misumena vatia hunting Honeybees

The Apple Trees are blooming like mad this year :) What a marvelous spectacle  Honeybees, Bumble Bees, Wasps and myriads of other pollinating insects are gorging themselves with nectar and pollen from these beautiful blossoms.
Poetic Apple Blossom
Honeybee eagerly collecting pollen from apple blossoms
scanning the apple blossom
Misumena vatia captured a Honeybee
I was walking down the road with my dear dog Bailey and saw a Honeybee sitting still on a Dandelion flower which was very strange. Bees are usually very busy collecting nectar and pollen but not this bee, so I went down on my knees to look closer. I pushed it a bit with my finger and she moved ... she moved without moving her legs !!! So I looked even closer and saw a yellow Pea-like thing in the centre of the flower. I looked even closer and noticed that this yellow Pea has legs and a head and is holding the bee. I made a photo and found on Wikipedia what this hunter is called; Misumena vatia or Goldenrod Crab Spider which can change colors from white to yellow depending on the flower colour it uses to hunt from. Very good disguise indeed. It feed on all sorts of pollinating insects including Wasps.

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