I was looking at my small patch of milkweed lately. First thing I noticed was a dead bee. Pulling it out, there was a stink bug that had grabbed it and eaten it.
A week later I was looking at the flowers, and noticed a little end of a bee leg stuck to one. Then, observing the bees working the flowers, I saw little yellow thingies stuck to their feet. On some of the bees there were LOTS of little yellow thingies stuck to their feet.
There was one poor bee, all worn out but still alive, that was stuck to one of the flowers and couldn't free herself. I also noticed a dead bee stuck, as well as a bee thorax stuck to the flowers.
http://picasaweb.google.com/scadsobees/Milkweed#If you want to see detail you will probably need to go to the album and zoom on the bees, I didn't crop the photos too far because I was afraid of losing too much quality.
I read an article in the American Bee Journal several years ago about milkweed and how the flower has little yellow sticky things that trap the bees feet for some reason. One bee can have many of these all over their feet. Most of the bees can pull them loose.
The bees love the stuff as well as the native bees, it seems to produce a lot of nectar, it smells really nice, and we get monarch butterflies and caterpillars visiting. I just thought that it was really interesting.
Rick