A new bee…every day
A brown-belted bumble bee with full pollen baskets in flight. Kind of late in the day as you can see by the shadows. But a great look at the brown belt on the bee.
Apologies for the uninteresting narrative. Trying to get several days posted in advance and I’m lacking inspiration and energy. Long day long drive tomorrow.
Just another day in August. Two brown-belteds sharing one blossom.
Doubles are always fun to get. I think they’re in the oregano…or maybe thyme? I can tell it’s not rosemary or sage or parsley…
Usually I’ll crop a little closer. But the whole effect is really good today. Been spending lots of time preparing for Feb. 1. Big day on this site!
This is the whole shot. No cropping. Like the focus on the eye and face. The foreground and background out of focus can be a little tough on some of my shots. There’s a “rule” in photography that the foreground out of focus distracts. Maybe it does. But with bees, and so much of life, keeping the focus in the right spot seems key. Irrespective of whatever else is going on around – both fore and back. And the sunflower doesn’t seem to mind.
…keeps them coming back! Here’s a brown-belted bumble on it. Pollen all over him (I think it’s a drone) and a rare shot of bumbleneck. Those necks fascinate me. Surely a product of millions of years of selection, but they look so strange…and the color – every one I’ve seen is white-ish. And so small for the sizes of the head and abdomen it seems. So interesting to me.
Didn’t shoot on Wednesday at all for some reason. The day got away from me. So here’s one from Tuesday on the ornamental oregano. Honeybee and a brown-belted bumble. The size difference is amazing. Rare to get focus on both bees. I’ve got a number of shots that have multiple bees – four or five, even – but the focus just doesn’t work. Point is, though, that they just swarm this one. It’s a neat little bush-like thing that seems to tolerate intermittent watering. Get one if you love the pollinators.
Sort of. If you count the jagged ambush bug as an incidental pollinator. And that’s probably acceptable.
I have a few observations:
It’s so hazy because of the fires here in the West that for most of the day I cannot even see my shadow.
’tis the season for brown-belted bumble drones. They’re everywhere
It’s very, very hot. And dry. Been weeks since any precipitation.
The asters are starting – watch out.
For some reason I thought this was thyme. So I was gonna make a funny, “from thyme to thyme” as the title. Really fell flat when it turned out to be an ornamental oregano. That said, it’s in full bee-bloom right now. Almost riotous. And it’s a neat plant, despite the light in the picture. Seems to want to spread some – lots of elbows thrown.
Parenthetically, I’ve coined a term for our gardens here. Apparently, there are lots of garden styles: formal, rock, cottage, prairie, traditional, and so on. Tons, depending on the list you look at. But ours here are called MMAyhem gardens. Use your imagination…and go back to the “throwing elbows” comment. They’re just remarkable (I think we’ve got something like fifteen or eighteen discrete gardens here, depending on how one counts) and I do them and you a disservice by only posting single blooms. Need to post some reference shots to do them justice.
Oh, the bee is a Brown-belted Bumble (Bombus griseocollis) and it was sure having a good time on the oregano. And not sharing very well with others of its kind (and not of its kind). Fun to watch. Too many words. Enjoy the pic!
I read an article once arguing that cameras are inherently racist. While I won’t speak to that, it sure is hard to get the center of the sunflower to pop without blowing out the sky and the petals. That said, it’s a pretty iconic shot for Summer at this place. The bumble is a Brown-belted.