Hanging By A Stamen
Hanging by a stamen.
I saw a big happy bumble browsing the blossoms of the ornamental pear that grows next to my deck. The top branches lean sideways far enough to see them right outside the bathroom window and I and my cats had front row seats to watch this big slow-moving black and yellow bee in the early morning sunlight.
From the side.
I had to photograph through my screen, though, and you’ll see an odd doubling of some of the edges of the bee and flowers. Bumblebees will not run away if they see movement or “hear” noise in the form of vibrations as other bees will often flee so I could have pushed the screen aside and gotten a clearer shot, but I wanted to make sure I got a few good shots first. Often enough I try to prepare everything for a clear photo but by that time my subject has decided to move on!
A pretty morning.
Bumblebees are as imperiled as other bees, and in some ways are more important to pollinating certain crops. That loud vibrating buzz can actually shake the pollen off of one flower and onto another so that the bee doesn’t have to visit each flower to effect pollination as do other bees.
Falling!
A female bumblebee can sting repeatedly, but they generally ignore humans and animals. Most of the time they’ll just move away from something that gets in their way so they may fly around you and even land on you, but they’ve got to be pretty stressed to sting you.
A busy bee.
The blossoms will only last a few days so I will likely not have another opportunity to photograph a big bumbling bumblebee in the pear tree until next year. but I really like the effect of the screen on this one. You can learn more about bumblebees on this study page Bumblebee.org or visit the Wikipedia page.
Happy.
This is shared in Inspire Me Monday on Create With Joy.
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“Everything Is Connected”
Save Your Native Bees
The flower of a tomato plant has the pollen so tightly held on the anther that it takes the vibration of a bumblebee to loosen it. The bee becomes dusted with the golden treasure, and leaves that flower for the next flower, spreading this elixir of life for tomatoes while gathering some for his own family back at the hive.
After WWII, when we began monocropping larger and larger farms, we used all the new pesticides invented during the war to kill off all the “weeds” in the fields which were too large to work by hand and making it easier for farmers to grow and harvest huge amounts of food. But the “weeds” were native wildflowers that fed the bees, that pollinated those fields.
I listened to a speaker tell us about all the ways bees make life on earth possible. Bees, yes, the ones we may be frightened of stinging us, the ones we don’t want building nests in our attics, the ones we wave away at picnics, the ones that are disappearing all over the globe and no one understands why.
I heard Marla Spivak in a segment entitled, “Why Are Bees Disappearing?” on the TED Radio Hour, which offers three or four segments of TED Talks under one topic, this one being “Everything Is Connected”.
If you garden, you know know these things, but many people do not. You can make a difference with your own back yard, letting your grass and cultivated plants mix with or be replaced by native species. I did this, and rather than being criticized and fined for a messy overgrown yard, my neighbors and visitors describe it as “lush” and “like a park”. And I am rewarded with this…
Evening Purple Dance
The delicate purple spikes of blue vervain bloom in the quiet time of the summer, elegant and dignified among the frenzy of production in my vegetable garden. One of my favorite wildflowers for its color and its sweet blooming, blue vervain was a volunteer in my garden, finding my little space acceptable to its needs.
In return I am rewarded with watching native honeybees visit to collect pollen, knowing I am at least doing a bit in the effort to save them by maintaining a wildness about my yard. I watched this bee march all the way around each little circlet of flowers before moving on to the next circlet.
Save the Bumblebees
And purple and green below—my favorite color combination! Looks like it might be Euglossa dilemma or a Little Green Sweat Bee, but I don’t know my bees all that well. The tiny spiders have taken up residence as well. In fact, blue vervain is native to most of North America and along with the flowers attracting important pollinators, the seeds are also important through the winter for songbirds, and the plant is the larval host for the common buckeye butterfly and it has a long history of medicinal use for humans. Refer to this USDA document to read more.
Little Green Bee, also an important pollinator.
Please feel free to copy and past this image with a link back to this post. Here’s another post with bees and wildflowers.
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For a print of any photo, visit “purchasing” for availability and terms. For photos of lots of black cats and other cats—and even some birds as I first published this post there—visit The Creative Cat.
Evening Purple Dance
Evening Purple Dance
The delicate purple spikes of blue vervain bloom in the quiet time of the summer, elegant and dignified among the frenzy of production in my vegetable garden. One of my favorite wildflowers for its color and its sweet blooming, blue vervain was a volunteer in my garden, finding my little space acceptable to its needs.
In return I am rewarded with watching native honeybees visit to collect pollen, knowing I am at least doing a bit in the effort to save them by maintaining a wildness about my yard. I watched this bee march all the way around each little circlet of flowers before moving on to the next circlet.
Save the Bumblebees
And purple and green below—my favorite color combination! Looks like it might be Euglossa dilemma or a Little Green Sweat Bee, but I don’t know my bees all that well. The tiny spiders have taken up residence as well. In fact, blue vervain is native to most of North America and along with the flowers attracting important pollinators, the seeds are also important through the winter for songbirds, and the plant is the larval host for the common buckeye butterfly and it has a long history of medicinal use for humans. Refer to this USDA document to read more.
Little Green Bee, also an important pollinator.
Please feel free to copy and past this image with a link back to this post. Here’s another post with bees and wildflowers.
SaveYourNativeBees
. . . . . . .
For a print of any photo, visit “purchasing” for availability and terms. For photos of lots of black cats and other cats—and even some birds as I first published this post there—visit The Creative Cat.
Today 