The first 21 days of a bee’s life are captured in this incredible and unprecedented 60-second timelapse footage by photographer Anand Varma.
Bees everywhere are being wiped out by the Varroa destructor mite, and given that bees pollinate one-third of the world’s food crop, this is a crisis of epic proportions.
Varma was commissioned by National Geographic to document this issue, and his work is an attempt to better understand the relationship between bees and the mites, from the very start of a bee’s life.
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This is a bee egg as it hatches into a larva.
The newly hatched larva feed hungrily on white goo secreted by nurse bees.
They transform into pupae.
Can you see the parasitic mites running around?
The bees grow some more.
And finally, their skin shrivels up and they sprout hair.
Amazing.