6th September 2025

 

Bees.  I love bees and also honeysuckle.  The flower is intricately made, a magic blending of colour and of course smell.  I would fill a garden with trellises for them to climb up just to be able to walk past and touch their fragrant petals.  The above one (honeysuckles are called Loniceras) which some would say is a common one but is actually very beautiful and slightly exotic.

But the other day I thought of Jennifer Owen's book - Me and my Garden and wondered should I get it.  Then, yesterday, my old journal book fell open on something I had written from Jennifer Owen's library book about bees years ago.  So......

"The eight garden species differ in seasonality, in nesting and in hibernation sites, in food sources and in feeding behaviour, effectively petitioning amongst themselves what this and neighbouring gardens have to offer.

Bombus Pratorum;  queens, black and yellow with a red tail are the first to emerge from hibernation, often being on the wing in March.  Several other species appear in April But, Bombus Lapidarius queens, black with a red tail, rarely emerge before late May or early June.  Male B.Pratorum are often produced as early as May and colonies may finish by June, whereas those of tawny-brown Bombus Agrorum  and of Bombus Terrisistris, black and yellow with a brownish-white tail, run on into September and females are still on the wing in October.

Ealy starters and late finishes can make the most of available food when few other species are around.  Nest site preferences also differ. Bombus Ruderarius black with a red tail, and Bombus Agrorum nest on the soil surface beneath clumps of grass or moss, whereas other species build nests at the end of disused mammal burrows. Bombus Hortorum one of the white tailed black and yellow species, builds at the end of short tunnels but B.Lapidarius and B. Terristris use approach tunnels a metre or more in length.

The early nesting B.Pratorum is an opportunist using whatever sites are available, choosing above or below ground .

Hibernating queens also use different sites, B. Terrisistris burying themselves in soil beneath trees, whereas B. Lapidarius queens burrow into well drained banks.  Thus therefore there is considerable partitioning of the physical environment, in time and in space, between different space.  They differ in feeding behaviour B. Agrorum workers, for instance, rarely forage further than 450 metres from their colony, whereas B. Lapididarius may collect food at sites more than a kilometre away.  They tend to visit difference flowers, largely because if tongue length differs between the species.

Although bumble bees usually collect food from flowers with tubes a few millimetres shorter than their tongues, tongue length places a limit on depth of flower tube from which nectar can be extracted.  B. Lucorum, black and yellow with a white tail, and B. Terresistris have the shortest tongues 10 millimetres in length (or less) and feed conventionally at flowers with rather short petal tubes, such as white clover and heather.  Both are nectar thieves, which bite holes in the base of deep flowers to extract nectar and they are the main bumble bees exploiters of honey dew.

At the other extreme are two white tailed black and yellow species Bombus Ruderatus and Bombus Hortorum, with tongues of 20 millimetres or more, which only feed at deep petal tubes, such as red clover. They have access to nectar that other species cannot reach and never touch honeydew or rob flowers of nectar, although their jaws are quite strong enough to bite holes in petals.  B. Agrorum is intermediate in every respect, its tongue is 11-14 millimetres long it feeds at flowers such as bird foot trefoil with nectar at an intermediate depth, and uses both red and white clover.

There are also specific preferences in feeding sites B.. Lucorum for instance, tends to feed at exposed flowers, whereas B. Pratorum visits flowers sheltered and shaded by vegetation

The net result is that the relationships of the eight garden species to their environment differ sufficiently for all to be accommodated in the same area.

Taken from: Garden  Life by Jennifer Owen page 154-155

It may be of little interest to most people to my blog but it shows a person who spent years studying her small suburban garden and noting the insects within it. Honey bees and bumble bees are vital to the growing of our crops, yet we show little respect to the insects of this world.  Perhaps we should.

The Hairy footed flower bee

My favourite bee was the first one I would see at the early part of the year a little black bee, probably the male bee exactly like the humming bird moth in its flight as it hovered over the Pulmonaria plants and the early flowers it produced.  Common name is lungwort because in earlier times its leaves were supposed to represent diseased lungs and the plant was of course supposed to cure this.  Ho-ho.

But if you love bees plant Lungwort and allow Himalyan Balsam to flower to, because........... bees can't distinguish a foreign plant from an indigenous one 😎

Meditating on the word bumble bee. you can see why because they always seem to show their 'bum' to you.  Earlier in history they were called humble bees.  Another small fact is that the rampant foreigner that grows so gleefully around here, Himalayan Balsam, is very attractive to bees and they get covered in the white pollen of the flower, turning the bees into 'white ghosts.'