A honey Bee on a lotus...the divine in the ordinary.

"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle" Albert Einstein wrote, and if we take the former path then it allows us to see the wonder in the most common of animals. It can also help us appreciate how bound we are with other animals in the ecosystem, and according to another (more apocalyptic) quote attributed to Albert Einstein (although there is no proof he actually said it): “If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years left to live.” Bees pollinate around a third of everything we eat and play an essential role in sustaining the planet’s ecosystems. Almost 90% of the crops grown for human consumption need bees and other insects to pollinate them.

Here a a Bee (Apis mellifera) poses in the natural symmetry of a lotus flower in my garden. Did you know the honey bee needs an internal body temperature of 35 degrees to fly.

This picture was taken during daylight, on the Peak in Hong Kong, using a ring-flash to fill in the darker shadows that flowers often have during the day.