Bye Bye Bees

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.

Duke blueberry

Pacific crabapple

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Guest photo and title by Josh. Josh has been a sometimes contributer to photography on this blog.

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Dandelions fade as blueberries blossom

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. 

April 11

April 25

Release of Mason bees intensifies

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 bee cocoons

 Mason bees are cool. They no sooner emerge than our video shows them mating!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUobtg7AYVo

Maple nectar – a delicacy for some insects

Honeybees are vastly outnumbered by other insects that love maple blossom nectar like these March flies. Click on picture to enlarge.

maple blossoms

Dandelion pollen

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.

Dandelion pollen

Colony buildup

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.

a good day for pollen

Bumblebee Beauty

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.

Bumblebee

Ilium Violet Rhododendron