Beauty and Destruction.

Some lovely views in the first half of the post, and then something else.

The first three photos are of one of the subfamilies of the Honey Bee, and this one is the Cape Honey Bee (Apis mellifera capensis).

Workers of the Cape Honey Bee invade and eventually overwhelm colonies of the African Honey Bee. Its workers lay unfertilized eggs that develop into females, thus reproducing at a faster rate than the African Honey Bee. Although very important as crop pollinators, Honey Bees may deprive more specialised and efficient indigenous bees of pollen and nectar, effectively reducing pollination of wildflowers.

Source: Book. Field Guide to Insects of South Africa. ISBN 978-1-77584-584-3.

Now this little guy below is a Pollen Wasp of the subfamily Masarinae.
It is half the size of the honey bees, and a real little cutie.
They collect the pollen and nectar and then they put it into the cells of their nests for the larvae to feed on.

They carry pollen in their crops, and regurgitate it along with nectar when provisioning the cells of their nests, and they lay their eggs in the soupy mass before sealing the cell. The nests are often constructed of mud, or burrows in the ground, and these can have one to multiple individual cells. The nests are commonly located in concealed places, such as under rocks or in crevices.

Source

I saw him coming in and I really hoped that he would sit somewhere.

Yep! There he sat, and I love the lines on its body and the way the sun glints on its wings.

And there it was off again to another flower.

And this is the something else. Our friend the wind.

What a shock to see this, as a strong wind blew that little tree in the photos right over, as well as one of the heavy cement flowerpots. So sad to see this, as now I can no longer take photos. I can no longer take photos of the bees and wasps, as their tree is kaput.

It takes two guys to carry this loaded flowerpot, and the wind simply blew it over.

Now have a look at this below, as the wind also had no mercy on this tree trunk.

You can see it is quite big, but it could not stand against the wind.

It was a double trunk tree, and now it will be a single trunk tree.

Last winter season we sat at this same place with some coffee, and the tables at the coffee house have big sun umbrellas over the tables. The poles of the umbrellas are anchored into a cement concrete block. Can you believe that a wind gust lifted and carried that umbrella, including the concrete block across the yard. It was so amazing to see, and it all happened so fast that I couldn't even take photos of it. Thankfully that doesn't happen too often, as it can be very dangerous at times especially if a car was parked below that tree or if a car was ripped off the highway. This is not farfetched as it happens here.
Such is life.

I hope you enjoyed the pictures and the story.

Photos by Zac Smith. All-Rights-Reserved.

Camera: Canon PowershotSX70HS Bridge camera.

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