The Beauty of Pollination

Bee mid-pollination

Beauty and seduction are nature's tools for survival, says, Louie Schwartzberg, who has been filming pollinators like bees, bats, hummingbirds and butterflies using close-up time-lapse photography for 35 years. Flowers and pollinators co-evolved over fifty million of years and this is the same seduction that goes on between mates of any species. We depend on pollinators for over one third of the vegetables we eat. So the plight of bees and colony collapse disorder (recently tied to certain pesticides) becomes our plight as well.

Here, Schwartzberg gives a great intro to one of nature's most fascinating stories before presenting some fantastic time-lapse images. Stirring stuff! (Thanks to @NaturConsCDA for posting the pollination version on Twitter... you can pick up the cool film bits at 3:20 or so)