Manuka flower nectar in winter

This is a manuka flower, picked this morning, in June, in winter. Which is pretty good on it's own. But look at the shiny stuff in the middle. That's nectar. And I saw a bee on it too gathering nectar.



Here it is a bit zoomed out. The silvery blobs are the pollen. Apparently bees go for the nectar of manuka rather than the pollen, but collect pollen through gumby-ness, crawling around in the nectar pond rubs off pollen too. Although no doubt there are some bees that target the pollen when they are foraging.

Bees go out to collect either pollen or nectar. At any one time some are on pollen patrol and some on nectar patrol. The amount of each a hive needs depends on the time of year, and the demand of bee brood - the hatching new bee babies who need pollen to create their food. Nectar is turned into honey, and also is food for adult bees.



And here is a seed pod, getting ready to burst forth. There will be zillions of seeds just in this one pod. Each seed is about 2mm long. There's one seed escaped lying on the top.