The available nectar and ripe pollen ensure busy trading time, weather permitting, although the flowerhead is ageing. The pollinators for Protea nitida include insects as well as birds.
The bees buzzing among the styles of the flower in the photo show that there are more things happening on a sunny morning in Jonkershoek than Horatio and many of us may have heard about, let alone in heaven and earth!
What is important is the pollen reaching the destinations for new fruit and seed to grow. The busier the open flower, the better.
And on the right last year’s flowerhead, by now brown and dry, probably still holds the hairy nut fruits ready for committing to the earth in the fullness of time. In this species that usually happens nine months to a year after flowering (Coates Palgrave, 2002; Rourke, 1980; iNaturalist).