I have to fess up and say that I’m like a kid on Christmas morning when it comes to ‘my’ bees. I go check the little osmia rufa hives every morning and worry about them when it rains. They’ve been sheltering in there the past few days as it’s been so cold but at least we are still getting activity. Not sure if we haven’t got a few leafcutter bees taking up residence there and these were probably what I saw in my previous post on this subject. You’ll have to bear with me because I’m learning all the time and this identification thing isn’t that easy when you don’t want to use a net and pot to check out what they are. Unless you can find them sunning themselves, which they do a lot, they fly so fast and they’re so tiny that you can’t get a real good look at them.
Yesterday, I was out and about in the village and spotted a bee on the pavement, fully loaded with her pollen sacs bursting to overflowing but just wandering aimlessly on the pavement. I found a bit of dead conifer stalk on the ground and managed to transfer her to a flower. When I came back that way an hour later, she had moved to another flower but was clinging on for dear life as it still wasn’t that warm!
Anyway, I’ve teased you long enough – what bee have I seen in my garden? Well I went out to do my usual check of the osmia rufa hives and thought I heard a lot of buzzing. There is a contoneaster that’s almost like a tree next to the hives and I looked up to see it awash with bees – thankfully – I’ve been very down recently with all the rain and cold weather we’ve been having as I haven’t seen that many bees. I stopped to spend five minutes checking that we have a very healthy colony of bombus pratorum males and the usual terrestris etc but then I noticed a bee with an orangey pompon and thought it was strange. Bombus hypnorum , the Tree Bumblebee, so called because it’s one of the few social bumblebees that nests in trees, came to mind but I dismissed it as pictures I’d seen were all coloured in red not orange. I thought it must be a bombus pascuorum or Carder bee and thought no more of it. Then it flew a little closer and I saw it had a black body and white tail. I now knew it definitely wasn’t a pascuorum and went inside to check my Bumblebee Conservation Trust poster stuck on the side of my fridge freezer and there it was in all its glory under the rare section – just think bombus hypnorum - gracious enough to look for food in MY GARDEN!!! YAY!!!!!!
And here’s the piccy to prove it – not a brilliant one, but you can defiinitely see the characteristic markings of the coat.
Bombus hypnorum feeding on cotoneaster June 2010
It really is like Christmas morning.
Keep looking out for the bees in both senses of the word.
Speak to you soon.
And for those of you sharp enough to remember my last post saying I’d seen one, it was an adrena fulva !! That’s good for the fulva but not so good for the rufa 
