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Pictures: Love Bugs

Snuggle Bees
Photograph by Dino Martins
Traditionally, it's the birds and the bees that get all the attention—unless you're an entomologist. Then it's the bees and the bees, not to mention the flies and the wasps and the moths ... and, well, you get the picture. National Geographic Emerging Explorer Dino Martins gives us a look into the love lives of his favorite subjects.
Most species of bees on the planet are solitary and not social like honeybees. Among the solitary species, females have nests to return to at night, but males have nowhere to go and end up sleeping on vegetation. Sometimes males will huddle together for warmth and comfort. Here are two different species of male bees, an Amegilla bee on the right and a long-horn bee (Tetraloniella) on the left, that have snuggled up together on a stalk of grass in a sheltered spot under an acacia tree. The photo was taken in Laikipia, Kenya.
Ball and Chain
Photograph by Dino Martins
Cherry-eyed damselflies in the western Serengeti demonstrate their typical mating ritual. The male is holding the female by the scruff of her neck. She has to fly around and lay eggs while carrying his weight on her neck. This extreme arrangement is known as mate guarding. Male insects of many different species will hold on to females after they mate with them. This is to prevent other males from mating with the female and ensuring that eggs laid are fertilized only by them.
Wasp Trio
Photograph by Dino Martins
Here's a trio of mud-dauber wasps in Kitengela, Kenya. I found this ménage à trois outside my house one morning. Two males were attempting to mate with one female wasp. They held on tenaciously to her while she struggled to escape their attentions.
A Healthy Relationship
Photograph by Dino Martins
Ants lovingly nurture various kinds of true bugs (Hemiptera), often stroking them gently and protecting them from predators and parasites. The bugs reward the ants with sugary nectar in the form of honeydew that they secrete as a waste product from feeding on the sap of the plants. These are scale insects (the red blobs) being tended by redheaded cocktail ants in Kenya. In many ways this relationship is similar to humans keeping cattle or other livestock and milking them.
Cheating Bees
Photograph by Dino Martins
It turns out that in nature there are lots of cheaters. Here a tiny stingless bee waits patiently on an eggplant flower as a Nomia bee approaches. The Nomia bee has the capability and strength to buzz pollinate this specialized flower. This involves the bee holding the flower in its "teeth" (mandibles) and vibrating it at a specific frequency using its wing muscles. Only then is pollen released. As the stingless bee is too puny to do this, it simply waits and then steals pollen that spills out after the Nomia bee has buzzed the flower.
Addicted to Pollen
Photograph by Dino Martins
Among the most important and straightforward love affairs in nature are those between bees and flowers. Bees visit flowers and get dusted with pollen as they forage. They carry the pollen around, pollinating other flowers, and in the process make the world go round. Flowers vary from open and accessible to complex contraptions that bees have to learn to operate.
Here is a beautiful leaf-cutter bee (Gronocera) in Western Kenya visiting the flower of a Mexican sunflower (Tithonia).
Successful Courting
Photograph by Dino Martins
This is an Amegilla bee approaching the flower of an orthosiphon in Laikipia, Kenya. Some flowers guide bees to them and the bees need to learn how to approach and handle the flower correctly. Here, the bee approaches the flower correctly.
Successful Courting, Part 2
Photograph by Dino Martins
The flower then "trips" as the bee lands on it and its weight causes the flower to bend, which exposes the anthers with pollen and straightens the tube in the flower, allowing the bee to access the nectar.

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