A bee pollinating a plant is like an evolved, on-going well-spring of gratitude.

The relationship of insects and plants, specifically flowers and pollinators, is a good avatar for the Thanksgiving holiday. It’s probably a stretch to say the common, evolved interest is actual gratitude in action, but metaphorically, to serve the needs of others for its inherent benefit to ourselves engenders us to and almost inevitably creates gratitude. What would we do without others?

Of course, another good reason, pollination is not just about planting a new harvest but eating, too! This little green sweat bee is digging right into the dandelion. Those are the bees just desserts, but I had my own “fixings” to deal with here. I have probably whined about mentioned it before, but I often have trouble exposing yellow flowers properly. In this case, I actually overcompensated and underexposed the flower a bit, but I still somehow managed to washout a nice prominent spot on the bee? Do you see it? I hope not, but you can probably guess it is the shiny spot on the abdomen. Originally it was a blotch of bright yellow with a bright white center (reverse egg). Using the heal and clone tools in GIMP, I patched it up. I’m pretty pleased with the result, even if it might be noticeable at a closer look.

So food and gratitude is the order of the day; I hope everyone has some of each. Whether you are celebrating or not, I surely want to thank new and old visitors to BugPhoto for taking an interest in bugs and my photography and musings. Here’s to a grand drink of nectar. Happy Thanksgiving.