The orchid is nature's great deceiver. It's also rare.

Bees are smart.

When flowers begin to bloom, bees are out there scouting prime locations for their colonies and sources of food - nectar.

Flowers are smart, too.

They have advertising budgets in the form of bright pedals. Their hope is to attract bees, offer them in nectar, and in exchange for the bees to cross-pollinate.

Like all systems that work, and indeed, this is a seemingly perfect system, some seek to hack it. Enter the orchid.

The orchid is a beautiful, rare, and difficult-to-grow flower. Like other weeds, it has quite the advertising budget - even humans love orchids! However, like all things that seem too good to be true, the orchid is a fake.

As we've established, flowers develop beautiful and bright pedals/designs to attract bees who receive nectar in return. Well, orchids don't provide much in the way of nectar - false advertising!

Bees get wise to the orchids scam and guess who stops receiving pollinators and dies off early?

You guessed it, orchids!

Beauty can be found everywhere. But beware of that which looks too good to be true. Like the orchid, it's probably pretty on the outside, but lacking substance within.

And, before you read too much into that last statement, remember that could very well be you and your brand.