There Are Bees That Sleep In Flowers And It’s As Cute As It Sounds

We need bees very much. They are the most important pollinator of food crops. In fact, it is estimated that one-third of the food we eat daily relies on pollination by bees. But no matter how much we are used to seeing them chatter and work around us, they need a good dream.

Recently, photographer Joe Nealey, a wildlife photographer, managed to photograph two bees sleeping in flowers. The photo shows the beautiful side of the bees we rarely see.

• The story behind these photos begins when Nicole, my fiancée, and I went out to look for flower buds. On our way back we found a whole field of pink flowers by the highway, so we stopped to take some photos. Nicole was photographing an orange flower hidden among the pink flowers. She heard something buzzing. She noticed that some of the flowers had bees, but they did not move at all. I got closer and started researching them. Then I noticed one bee coming into the open flower along with another. I was thrilled.

I didn’t know there were bees sleeping in flowers. This species of bees, called Diadasia diminuta, sleep in orange flowers called “Globe Mallows”.

When it comes to sleeping bees, there are some interesting details.

“Bees don’t have eyelids, so you can’t look for bees with closed eyes,” said Brandon Hopkins, a bee researcher at Washington State University.

“By carefully observing the bees, scientists have found that honey bees stop moving their antennae while they sleep,” he said.

Exactly how and where the bees sleep is unknown because it depends on where they live. After all, there are more than 20,000 known bees living on our planet. Honeybees, for example, work day and night and change shifts while sleeping in the hive. Their sleep patterns change as they grow older. Young bees sleep less, but older ones sleep between 30 minutes and one and a half hours each night, and sometimes their naps last for 15 to 30 seconds.

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