Just about as perfect a photo as you can get

This photograph of a hummingbird and four bees drinking water from a birdbath was taken by Toshiyasu Morita (Hummingbird & Bees — Toshiyasu Morita). It is an amazing photo, about as perfect a photo as you could ever hope to capture and actually get. I love it! As I've written about before in this blog, the honeybees in my garden love drinking water from the birdbath on a hot dry summer day, so this photo is a wonderful reminder of that. I've photographed them doing so, but not as up close as Morita managed. This photo makes my day!

https://images.app.goo.gl/trvB6YqZLnDwFdK2A

Bee rescuer and bumblebee butts

I have officially become a bee rescuer in the garden. Specifically, I rescue them from drowning in the birdbath, which they frequent often when the weather is very warm, as it has been for the past week. They land on the rim of the birdbath to drink the water, but sometimes they slip into the water and don't seem to be able to swim back to the edge. It doesn't happen often, but when it does, I am usually able to push them to the edge with my (gloved) finger or a short stick so that they can crawl up the rim right to the edge and dry their wings off before they take flight again. I've rescued mostly honeybees, but today, I rescued a yellow jacket as well by pushing it to the edge with my (gloved) finger. It did not need to dry off its wings before it took flight the way honeybees need to. The wings of a yellow jacket seem to be longer and more slender compared to those of bees, which are shorter and wider. It's only my observation, but bees use a much longer time to dry their wings, fanning them at intervals as though to get rid of any excess water droplets that may still be present. 

I've also noticed that bumblebees like to take naps in flowers. Sometimes when I think they're dead, I find out that they're only resting. They work hard enough, so that a nap perhaps is what they need to keep them going. The lifespan of bees varies quite a bit from what I've read online. The worker bumblebees' lifespan is from two to six weeks, whereas queen bumblebees can live for a year on average. The lifespan of worker honeybees is between 6 and 7 weeks in the spring/summer and 4 to 6 months in the autumn; queen honeybees live for 3 to 4 years on average (Bee Lifespan: How Long Do Bees Live? - AZ Animals (a-z-animals.com). 

There are a lot more bumblebees than honeybees in the garden this year. I have come across several dead bumblebees, and I always feel a tinge of sorrow when I see them. Such short lives, such industrious little creatures. I am no longer afraid of bees as I was when I was younger. But of course it goes without saying that I respect them and have learned to coexist peacefully with them, I let them go about their business and they let me go about mine, They do protest a bit when I water the garden, especially the flowers that they frequent, and they let me know by buzzing about me. But it all returns to normal after a minute or two. 

I saw a cute photo the other day on Facebook of a bumblebee that had fallen asleep in a flower. Its little butt was sticking out of the flower, and the person who posted it made a cute comment about bumblebee butts. Here are similar photos that I found on this website, Tired Bumblebees Who Fell Asleep Inside Flowers With Pollen On Their Butts » Design You Trust. I did not take these photos, so please credit the website if you use them. I think they're adorable. Enjoy! 

Honeybees enjoying the snowdrops

It's still quite early in the season, but the snowdrops have bloomed first as they always do, providing food for the honeybees that are no longer dormant in their hives. We've had exceptionally nice weather in Oslo for the past two weeks, with daytime temperatures around 50 degrees F. So the bees are out in force during the early afternoon when the sun is at its warmest. I took this video the other day and wanted to share it with you. Turn up the volume for full effect!

Snowdrops and honeybees

Spring is here and daytime temperatures are getting warmer. I did several days' work in the garden during the past two weeks. I usually make myself lunch and a thermos of tea, and start my garden day by eating lunch in the garden. Then I get to work, raking, cutting dead flowers, clipping the raspberry and blackberry bushes, and spreading compost soil on the vegetable beds in order to prep them for the coming garden season. I've also sowed out different seeds in the greenhouse--pumpkin, butternut squash, tomatoes, rose mallows, sunflowers, and hollyhocks. There is still a lot of prep work to do, but it's work that relaxes me in this pandemic time. Who knew that we would be starting a second year of this scourge? At least when I'm in the garden, I don't think about the pandemic at all. 

It's still too early for most flowers to bloom, but the bulbs are beginning to poke their heads up out of the soil--crocuses, daffodils, tulips, and hyacinths. The only flowers that have bloomed so far are the snowdrops. They're spread around the garden (by design) and each year the patches grow a bit larger. This past Monday, the largest patch had visitors--honeybees and a butterfly. I didn't know that they liked snowdrops, but they do, and now I know that. Nature always has something new to show us, to teach us. Here's a photo I took the other day, showing a couple of bees if you look closely. 

The bird bath is a popular meeting place

A few days ago, it was the sparrows who were enjoying a communal bath in the birdbath in the garden. Today, it was a meeting place for many of the garden's honeybees who were eagerly drinking the water. It was a warm and dry day, so that was probably the explanation for why there were so many (at one point I counted up to sixteen bees sitting on the rim of the bath). I have never seen so many of them gathered at the 'drinking hole' before. They were buzzing to and fro, landing on the rim of the bath and then taking off again. A few of them ended up in the water, twirling about like whirligigs. If they don't get find their way out of the water quickly, they can drown. So I have helped them out a few times, offering a (gloved) finger or a stick for them to climb on. They grab on eagerly, and if they're not too waterlogged, they fly away fairly quickly, which always makes me happy. This is a video of the bees today in the garden. 

Bumblebees and lavender

I've planted a lot of lavender plants in the garden, and the bees--both honeybees and bumblebees--love them. There are always a lot of them hovering over the plants, flitting from one flower to the other. When I am weeding the flower garden, I can often hear the bumblebees' characteristic buzz; neither they nor the honeybees are aggressive in any way. I call it peaceful coexistence in the garden. They don't like it very much when I water the flowers, but they deal with it. I took a video of the bumblebees enjoying the lavender......Enjoy!