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This week, I counted 19 visiting honey bees on my sedum spectabile (Ice Plant) - it's the little things in life that make me happy

jazzmini1959 wrote:This week, I counted 19 visiting honey bees on my sedum spectabile (Ice Plant) - it's the little things in life that make me happy

Bees. What are they? I don't imagine I counted 19 all summer. The lack of bees is of some concern. I have most of the plants that attract them and don't use insecticides.

Tht's a real shame Durgan. My garden is full of them for months on end; all sorts of bees. Here's a couple of pics I took 31 August of my Sedum.

I don't get too many honey bees here, I don't think there is a hive within several miles so all the ones I do see are wild ones.
BUT, I have loads of bumble bees everywhere taking their place, in fact I found two bumble bee nests in my orchard this year.
I have seen bumble bee nests before that were just a hole in a bank, but these bees had constructed a nest that looked like a heap of grass cuttings about the size of a small football ... never seen that before.

Odsox, I have two nest of bumble bees in my compost heaps, will they disappear? Need advice! pbf.

prison break fan wrote:Odsox, I have two nest of bumble bees in my compost heaps, will they disappear? Need advice! pbf.

I don't know for sure, but as bumble bees don't make honey they probably are the same as wasps, in other words they probably all die except a few queen types that hibernate.
I expect someone will prove me wrong.

Thanks odsox, I'm hoping the first frosts will see them off! I wouldn't mind anywhere else, but I need my compost. pbf.

Erm, Mandy, I hate to break it to you but your second photo is a butterfly, not a bee.

Zoe

Nice Bee & butterfly pictures MMM................shame no stripes on the lawn

Millymollymandy.

Lovely pictures. I must grow sedum next year.

Well Zoe you'll have to come to Brittany to see the Great Peacock Bee here.

Pelmetman, stripes in lawns, I don't think that works when your 'lawn' is composed of mainly weeds. I'm just pleased it is green!

And thanks Durgan.

We`ve got a bee problem on our allotment site, i.e. a plot holder who goes hysterical if any honey bees go near her! There are hives on a neighbouring plot and they`ve never been any bother. I got a three page letter from the hysterical one reporting a 'sustained and vicious attack' on her and her dog by a mob of bees and demanding that the committee operate their 'duty of care'. When asked, she confirmed that she hadn`t actually been stung but 'could have been'. I reassured her that they were prolly a mob of expelled drones and that she`d been in no danger but she just kept repeating that she 'could have been'. A beekeeper down the other end of the site has had to take her bees off her plot because of constant complaints from other plot holders about 'imminent and possible dangers'. I`m at my witzend! The bee haters are always the loudest voices. I dread the AGM when I reckon there`ll be a claque of protesters demanding a no-bee rule.

Blimey! Although I am very wary of wasps because I get a really nasty reaction to their stings; bees I don't worry about one bit. I'm always picking raspberries with them buzzing around me, and one year when I was putting down jam for the ants who were milking the aphids on the broad beans, I had swarms of bees attracted to the jam. I just carried on gardening/picking broad beans with loads of bees all around me, and we both just got on with our thang and they were not interested in stinging me.

That`s been my experience too. The same hives swarmed last year and they just swarmed around me and moved on to a nearby tree.

How very stupid and ignorant, you should point out "no bees, no runner beans" or broad beans, or strawberries, or apples, or plums, or a host of other crops that need pollination to fruit, but especially runner beans as I bet that's what they grow.
Short sighted or what ?