I’ll end the first six months of Project 365 with a honey bee (Apis mellifera), busily visiting the flowers on a wild onion in the empty lot next to my office.
Tagged With: Honey Bee
Honey Bee on Wild Onion
Honey Bee on Rudbekia
As I’ve mentioned before, the garden is somewhat overrun with Rudbekia (a.k.a. black-eyed Susan) flowers. The bees don’t mind. There are, actually, other things in bloom, but none nearly as obvious. The mountain mint (Pycnanthemum muticum), for instance, is very popular with the bees of all sorts. But their flowers are much less showy. This afternoon I took a bunch of pictures of various bees on the black-eye Susan flowers. This one is a western honey bee, Apis mellifera. Contrary to popular belief, they are in no real danger of all dying out. You can, to a large degree, thank capitalism for that, although I think the danger was considerably exagerated, in any case.
Western Honey Bee (Apis mellifera)
We had another day at Shady Grove Hospital today but before I went I took a few pictures in the back yard. There was a monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) on the butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa) and I had hoped to get a picture of that. I would have, except I had taken the memory card out of the camera and when I put it back in the write protection switch had been pushed into the off position and the camera would not take a picture. By the time I got it reset the butterfly was gone. I was able to get this photo of a western honey bee (Apis mellifera), instead.
Western Honey Bees (Apis mellifera)
We took a drive to Lewis Orchard to buy peaches today. It was very hot and being out in the sun with masks on was not really all that nice but we managed and bought enough to make a cobbler and have plenty left over to eat simply cut up with whipped cream. From there we stopped at our friends’ farm. The last time we were there Greg said I should stop to see the bees but we left the other direction so didn’t. This time we stopped and I got a few pictures of the honey bees (Apis mellifera). I also happened to get stung on my nasal septum, which wasn’t the most fun, but a honey bee sting is, thankfully, not that bad.
Honey Bee (Apis mellifera)
The mountain mint (Pycnanthemum muticum) is starting to bloom. I won’t claim it’s a hive of activity yet, but there’s certainly a bit of a buzz. Mostly I’m seeing honey bees (Apis mellifera) on them so far, but the mountain mint is very attractive to a wide variety of insect life from small beetles and bugs to bees and wasps, and some butterflies. The buddleia next to this tends to get more butterflies, though. It loves the sun and the insects are out in the most fierce in the heat of the day. Not my favorite time to sit there with my camera but it’s sometimes worth the effort.
Honey Bee on Aster
Cathy and I took a walk along Croyden Creek early this afternoon. It has turned cool, although with the humidity in the woods and the steep nature of the trail, I was fairly warm. It was nice to get out, of course, and we only saw a few other people. We walked from the Croyden Creek Nature Center down stream almost to where it joins Rock Creek. Coming back, we turned up a side valley and came out between the two main parts of Rockville Cemetery. Back and the nature center, I took this photo of a western honey bee (Apis mellifera) on an aster of some sort.