The lovely, little purple flowers of the chaste tree are perfect for small pollinators. There are lots of small flowers, all growing close together with long, pollen laden stamens that protrude from the flowers. The flowers only bloom for a couple of weeks, but while they are blooming there can be literally hundreds of pollinators on and hovering around them. I myself have seen lots of the honey bees (Apis mellifera) like the one above, but I have also seen several types of wasps, a myriad of butterflies, moths, and even occasionally hummingbirds. I’ve also read that at night they are sometimes visited by bats. Whenever these trees are blooming, I make sure to drop by the nursery that grows them and take some photos of the flowers and the insects. Last spring, this was one of my favorites. The little bee was very busy going from flower to flower and even though her leg pouches were full to the bursting point, she kept adding more. These bees really do live up to their common name of “workers”, and if for some reason they can’t or don’t, the others in the hive will simply kill them. The hardest workers are most advantageous for the hive, and through evolution, it would be very unusual to get a lazy honey bee.