Winter flower: wintersweet, Chimonanthus

科 腊梅科 Calycanthaceae
属 腊梅属 Chimonanthus
种 腊梅 C. praecox
俗名

金梅、蜡花、蜡梅花、蜡木、麻木紫、石凉茶、唐梅、香梅 Wintersweet

ZBAS*: 4

I haven’t returned to China to celebrate the spring festival for more than 20 years, but I came back last year and continue this year. The Hunan province has been around 8 ℃. On February 6th, the second day of the new year, the temperature suddenly rose to about 22 ℃. Immediately contact the classmate of my primary school, Zhang Tieniu, and go to photograph the bees together. Because I saw someone photographed bee picking plums a few days earlier, I asked him if there were plums in Hunan. He said that there was a tree near the tea garden. Immediately,he promise to photograph the bees with me in the afternoon. This time I brought Sony’s full-frame microcomputer, 50mm macro. The new 90mm is heavier, this time without belts, and neither of the two wireless flashes, because there are more things coming back this time. But the UV camera was also brought, and it seemed that there was no opportunity to use it.

At 3:30 in the afternoon, we arrived at a mansion in the tea garden of Tongtang. I heard that it cost more than 10 million yuan to build. There is a plum tree on the right side of the gate, which is almost completely opened, with a little sign of freezing. A begonia on the left is also in bloom, but taller. There is a pool inside, there are a few plum blossoms next to it, and a few other plums. I looked at the plum for a long time. There were no bees and only a few flies. Just hit the bee picking plum. The bees on plum blossoms have been photographed in the United States, but they are Apis mellifera. 

I took a photo of plum blossoms and then I took a photo of a begonia stalk, but the flowers were relatively high and they were photographed in the sky against the light. Not many good ones are just a record. Return to wintersweet and wait for the bees. Four minutes have not passed. I am about to give up. Suddenly two honeybee came! Immediately I became energetic, and a few photos were not bad. One of them was too high and was also photographed. Because there is no time to adjust the camera, you can actually open the large screen, so there is no need to take a blind shot.

The wintersweet bloom from December to March, so there should not be many opportunities to see Apis mellifera on the wintersweet. Look at the photos. The bees are also collecting honey, but they should not receive commercial honey. The bees also have pollen. Give a 4/10 point.

Chinese wintersweet can be used as medicine and flowers can be dried to make tea, but tea should not be drunk to avoid poisoning.

There are many ancient poems about wintersweet. Today we are going to drink wedding wine, just copy one.

冬至前月赴季父梅花之集与韩蒲向宪唐干诸人

[宋] 胡寅

不辞开后苦寒侵,为与骚人托契深。
可但风光回岁律,更分华色掞儒林。
欲歌白雪词难和,试挽幽香力尚禁。
等是美名无玷染,腊梅何事色如金。

The first month of the winter solstice went to Ji Father’s plum blossom collection and Han Pu Xiangxian and Tang people
[Song Dynasty] Hu Yin

After leaving the bitter cold invasion, to deepen the relationship with Sao.
But the scenery returns to the law of age, and it is even more distinguished.
To sing Bai Xue’s words is difficult to reconcile, try to ban Youxiang force is still banned.
Waiting for the beautiful name, Wumei is so golden.

1. The following four photos are photographed with the camera held on the head. It can be easily seen that this is a Apis cerana, because the black and white of the abdomen are very clear. But the shallow part is actually yellow. This bee should be collecting honey.

2. You can see the pollen on the pollen basket.

3. Still this bee, she flew up. There are many small flies on the flower.

4. Finally, I am about to leave. It should be another bee ran to me. Unfortunately, there is no flash. This place is darker and the ISO is higher.

5. She desperately went into the flowers to collect honey. It seems that honey collection is mainly because there is not much pollen.

6. This one can see her tongue (kiss) licking honey.

7. This photo was inside a licking flower. The one above may be wrong, she licked the flower outside.