In just one short walk, really rather close to an unloved patch of earth begrudgingly acting as a car park, I met with three lovely bees. They were all absolutely loving the monoculture of tri-cornered garlic, harassing the little white and green flowers, stirring the perfume into the air.
I barely had time to take the lens cap off and get out of the car before spotting this guy – I think he is a white-tailed bumble bee. It’s still quite early in the year for bees (given the snowy weather has delayed everything a little) so I was over excited and battling a long lens so this isn’t the clearest of photos.
White-tailed bumble. Photo credit: Em
Next up, rather excitingly was a tree bee (Bombus hypnorum). A relative newcomer to the British Isles, only arriving from mainland Europe in 2001. As the conservation movement have assessed this little critter, decided it doesn’t harm our native bees and is an industrious pollinator it seems to be welcome here (the parallels to the immigration debate are not entirely comfortable).
As always, being colourful and furry is a distinct advantage in establishing the positive reputation of an animal. And for those worried about the stinging end, well then you probably aren’t looking that closely at the bees anyway (you’re missing out though!).
Interestingly the tree bee is reported to prefer open flowers, like daisies, rather than trumpet like flowers, like foxgloves or, erm… wild garlic. So either their palettes are expanding to take advantage of the british delicacies, to exploit the glut of garlic or the seasonal lag we are experiencing has set them out of kilter with their normal flower food. Regardless, I watched this bee visit a whole host of these flowers so it probably isn’t a one off.
Tree Bee in Garlic.
On to the last bee of the morning then – another white-tailed. This one was doing neat little pirouettes on an unopened flower bud, giving me a 360 view. This is exactly the kind of obliging demonstration I need it seems to shoot a decent photo and get a good ID.
All in all, a good day for bee-watching.
Em
PS – The UK version of Masterchef is clearly clogging my thoughts at the moment. To be clear I didn’t eat the bees. Or the garlic.
Nature watching in South Devon 