Magyar Posta is issuing a special souvenir sheet presenting the world and diversity of pollinating insects. Fifty thousand copies of the standard edition of the issue, which was designed by the graphic artist Ágnes Berta, and 4,000 copies of the red-numbered imperforated edition were produced by ANY Security Printing Company.
For the plants providing the basis of our nutrition to produce a crop and form seeds, they need to be pollinated, which is often done by animals. Thus pollinators play a vital role in our lives. Regrettably, their numbers have declined drastically over recent decades due to the use of chemicals in agriculture, habitat loss and climate change.
The design of the stamp of the souvenir sheet features a buff-tailed bumblebee resting on a viper’s bugloss plant. Above the stamp in the frame of the sheet, there is a hummingbird hawk-moth, which is aptly named as the moth can often be seen darting among flowers and hovering like a hummingbird. To the right of the stamp a marmalade hoverfly can be seen. This insect with black and yellow stripes is often mistaken for a wasp but closer observation reveals that it only has one pair of wings and shorter antennae. Above to its right is one of our most strikingly coloured butterflies, the European peacock, and lower down another butterfly, a southern festoon, is shown. At the bottom of the design, three kinds of bee appear, which are from left to right Bombus rupestris, a species of cuckoo bumblebee, the western honey bee and a species of leafcutter bee. The first day cover features a garden full of trees, flowers and insects, while the postmark shows a bee pollinating a flower.
