I wouldn’t be looking forward to so many fruits if it weren’t for the bees. And since National Pollinator Week starts today, it seemed like a good excuse to spend a little time this morning looking for bees. It never ceases to amaze me, how many bees you can find. The big ones buzz pretty obviously, but as you stand quietly and watch, the little ones reveal themselves. They crawl deep into the flowers and out again. They hover and dart and come to rest. Here’s a few of what I saw:
The raspberries are very popular now. There were honeybees, common bumblebees, bright yellow perplexing bumblebees, some sort of little black bees, and even miner bees. The cilantro is flowering, so it’s on its way to becoming coriander. All those tiny flat-faced flowers attract hover flies. They’re predators as well as pollinators, hovering near the flowers, looking for handy places to lay eggs and stopping occasionally for a sip of nectar. I think I even saw a wool carder patrolling the sprawling catmint, where spikes of lavender flowers have been feeding bees for weeks.
Have you seen any bees lately?
Writing Every Day 