A surprise:
This year, on one of my trips to the site to advance a set of experiments, I was
working with the plants when I observed something surprising. A European honeybee (Apis mellifera)
entered a Darlingtonia flower! I was surprised--first, to see a honeybee at the site, and second to see it
actually enter
a flower! Stephen Davis, who had joined me for this trip, saw the bee enter the flower too!
I clumsily captured and killed the bee for further study. And then, to my continued surprise, saw more honeybees working the
flower. Stephen jumped into action with his digital film camera, while I used my digital Pentax SLR. We spent quite
a while documenting honeybees entering flowers, and caught several in mesh bags for later study.
