A couple of Saturdays ago, Jim and I attended a workshop on Beekeeping hosted by one of our favorite local garden haunts, Downtown Home and Garden. The two beekeepers who presented did a fantastic job of explaining an awful lot of information about getting started and maintaining bee hives. We are convinced that beekeeping would be fun and very worthwhile. It’s late in the season to begin a project from scratch and we have enough to keep us busy for the moment, so we are putting “Start keeping bees” on the top of the list of plans for next year. We’ll write more about what we learned in another post.
I had bees on the brain when we came home. While I was taking pictures of the garden, I caught sight of this good-sized bumble bee getting well-acquainted with the flowers on the ground cover in our neighbor’s yard. I know she’s not a honey bee, but she was fascinating nonetheless.
Not a Honey Bee
I followed her for quite a while, taking shots of her hard at work.
She moved quickly from flower to flower of the blooming ground cover in our neighbor’s yard.
I have no idea how, but she somehow kept track of where she’d already been, because she didn’t back track at all. That would be a handy skill to have, wouldn’t it?
My photography skills were pushed to the limit trying to keep up with her. For every shot where I had a clear view of my bee, I ended up with ten that had blurry backgrounds or no bee at all. She moved fast!
She didn’t seem to mind being photographed at all, and that made me glad. Supposedly, if you don’t bother them, they won’t bother you.
