The Pacific crabapple blossoms in perfect timing with the Duke blueberry. The buzz in the crabapple tells you the bees preference. While honeybees are fickle the bumblebees stick with the blueberries. I have never seen a bumblebee on a crabapple blossom.
Archive for April, 2010
Bye Bye Bees
Posted by blueberrytalk on April 30, 2010
Posted in pacific crabapple | Leave a Comment »
Request permission to land
Posted by blueberrytalk on April 29, 2010
Guest photo and title by Josh. Josh has been a sometimes contributer to photography on this blog.
Posted in Honeybees, pollen | Leave a Comment »
Dandelions fade as blueberries blossom
Posted by blueberrytalk on April 27, 2010
Blueberry growers have been told that bees will forsake the blueberry blossoms in favour of dandelions. The pictures below tell a different story. On the left the bright orange dandelion pollen shows that the bees have been spending a lot of time in the dandelions. Now that the blueberries are about 10% bloom the picture on the right shows little indication of dandelion activity and most of the dandelions have gone to seed.
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Release of Mason bees intensifies
Posted by blueberrytalk on April 20, 2010
Mason bees have been coming out of their cocoons for some time now but recent warmth has caused a surge of released bees. This is in perfect timing with the opening of blueberry blossoms.
Mason bees are cool. They no sooner emerge than our video shows them mating!
Posted in Blueberries, Mason bee cocoons | 2 Comments »
Maple nectar – a delicacy for some insects
Posted by blueberrytalk on April 11, 2010
Honeybees are vastly outnumbered by other insects that love maple blossom nectar like these March flies. Click on picture to enlarge.
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Dandelion pollen
Posted by blueberrytalk on April 11, 2010
To get a good view of the dandelion pollen click on the picture to enlarge and then on the magnify icon to see the abundance of pollen from this source.
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Colony buildup
Posted by blueberrytalk on April 9, 2010
The colonies have been stimulated with sugar water to produce strong colonies for the blueberry pollination. The first early blossoms are showing on the June variety. Today was the first day in a while when the bees could get out and they took full advantage by bringing in loads of dandelion pollen.
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Bumblebee Beauty
Posted by blueberrytalk on April 4, 2010
This bumblebee is huge with distinctive yellow stripes. Most bumblebees are hard to capture in a picture because they feel obliged to circle you while buzzing loudly but this bee posed nicely. Notice the beautiful color of the wing veins.
Posted in Bumblebees, Rhododendron | Leave a Comment »