The Hairy Footed flower bee - Anthophora Plumipes; A sign of spring surely. Early to the flowers, you must plant lungwort, flowering currant and maybe comfrey. The female almost black, the male ginger, though I notice in the video he gives different colouring. Alys Fowler gives a good sketch of them here. When I talked to the bee man the other week, he had not heard of them, and looking up at the leaflet he gave me, many bees are missing from his list. May he plant a few lungwort plants and discover them.
I am not sure the bee would like it up here in the colder North but my Pulmonaria in the old garden showed a couple last year. You must always be patient. Love them and cherish them for they are gentle bees, not bumble because they are so called solitary bees.
Bensozia on Ukraine 1) and 2) Strange Defeatism About Ukraine
There are so very many bees! I have a lovely book on bees that we got from our Master Gardener group and while I perused it, maybe this spring I should really read it!
ReplyDeleteYes it will probably be very good on 'bee housing', do you have those little houses made up of cut up bamboo sticks I wonder Tabor. Always plant for bees, mine loved foxgloves.
DeleteThere even are bees that look like honey bees, but are not. They're visibly bigger.
ReplyDeleteAlso fly bees and wasp bees Joanne. Pretending to be someone else in the insect world, think of peacock butterflies with the big eyes on their wings, is a protective camouflage.
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