Bumblebee

AN UPLIFTING WALK

| gaiainaction

On one of the first beautiful, sunny and warm days this year I made a walk at Lough Hyne and the forest that overlooks this salt water lake.  At the lake it was very busy with swimmers and kayakers enjoying their Sunday morning.  Folks have been soo browned off with all the rain we have been getting, so there was a pretty happy atmosphere all round.

Lough Hyne

I met by chance a friend of mine walking her little dog, and it was lovely catching up with her. After a while I started on my walk up the hill as I wanted to check the wild plants and the trees.  It was an ideal day for it, the sun showed the bright yellow green of the emerging sycamore leaves beautifully,  while underground there was a multitude of interesting wild plants and flowers.

It is of great interest to me lately of what is growing underneath trees as my garden is slowly becoming a forest garden due to our tree canopies growing larger and lager. 

Overlooking Lough Hyne, so peaceful.

I’m quite interested in what is happening to the trees at the moment seeing it’s Spring time.  I finally enrolled in an online course on woodland trees id. Trees in the different seasons are discussed and giving all the information to identify them in order to look up a whole lot more information about them. Encouraging nature connectedness and awareness of forest ecology. Looks like it’s going to be very interesting, especially coupled with enjoyable forest walks for practical identification.

Holly flower
Sycamore tree
Quite old stump
Violet plant
Magestic!

Even the bumblebees were delighted with such a sunny beautiful day, and of course they were hungry too! 

A DELIGHTFUL DISCOVERY

| gaiainaction

A bumblebee that was sitting on the bathroom window, not moving. I grabbed my camera to take some shots and then got out the honeypot and as soon as I touched the surrounding area of this beautiful insect it put out its proboscis and started to suck the honey with gusto, lovely to see this. It gave me another chance to take photos. I see this little bumblebee type in the garden a everyday, feeding or at least looking for nectar on the flowers of the large comfrey bush. They are very small in comparison to other bumblebees and move fast, never been able to take a photos until now. Just found out something else interesting, from observation, they do not go into the comfrey flowers, rather they bore a little hole in the tip of the flower petals and suck that way (I guess). I’d love to have a proper identification. I’ve looked at all sort of websites without any luck. Now I came across a blog post of a fellow blogger that looks very interesting, it is at https://standingoutinmyfield.wordpress.com/2017/06/29/cheat-guide-to-the-irish-bumblebees/
Could it be a young male B.Lapidarius I wonder?  And no it is not!  I have since learnt from a very reliable source, one of my fellow bloggers who is an ecologist, see her blog at https://murtaghsmeadow.wordpress.com/ that our little bumblebee is a bombus pratorum, or early bumblebee worker.  It is not a male because males do not collect pollen and in the photo we can see lots of pollen on its legs.  Only the queens and the workers collect pollen, the males do visit the flowers for nectar though (Murtagh’s Meadow).
DSCF2389

DSCF2383

DSCF2388

Just adding two more photos of other bumblebees from the garden.

20180610_175555

This one is also small but it has two bands of yellow and a white bum, so different from the previous bumblebee.

20180523_174945

And this is a large one orange top, a lovely one.  Must get better photos though.

I would also like to pass on recommended reading:  Dave Goulson’s book – A sting in the tale –