Flowering Gum and Bees

The pink flowering gum - Eucalyptus ficifolia (a bloody long name for this tree), is a favourite tree in South Australia. Although it's endemic to Western Australia, it has been planted here very widely, and does well.

You can get a huge range of colours, from orange through all shades of pink to brilliant red. These trees have a mass of flowers on them at this time of year making them a real show stopper at their peak. Seen better in LARGE.

They also produce a lot of nectar which makes them a target for feral honey bees. This one is growing in the Brownhill Creek Conservation Park, and you've never seen so many bees in all your life.

There is very little chance that these bees are from a domestic hive. They make their nests in hollow logs and trees, and in a way I guess they really are a nuisance to the commercial bee keepers.

I selected this particular photo for today for 2 reasons. Firstly you can see 5 bees in the shot on one bunch of flowers, plus some gum nuts from the same tree where I blipped gum nuts on December 15th. You can see the flower buds in that photo that are in full bloom today.

The second reason is that this shot in untouched, straight from the camera, not even cropped or enhanced in any way. Some days you can get lucky! I had to shoot fast because Paladian was waiting to take over the camera to do her bee shots at the creek, about 40 metres away!

I want one of these trees for our garden, but Paladian isn't so keen. She says she's got enough feral bees at home, and only wants to attract the more interesting native bees! Bees are bees and you can never have too many.