The garden has been blasted all day by a southwesterly which has gusted up towards force 6, and the morning started cold, the thermometer just reading 12C when we first went out but struggling up to 15C as the morning wore on. However, despite these adverse conditions, the insects....
....have been out in force in our back garden, wasps, hover flies and several species of....
....small bees, all managing precarious landings on plants they were waving around madly in the wind. There was almost a sense of desperation, as if they knew that summer is moving over indecently quickly to give way to autumn.
To my considerable surprise, two butterflies were out in this chaos, a very smart red admiral which, surprisingly, chose to feed on verbena plants which, on the end of six-foot stems, were describing wild arcs in the wind, while....
....the peacock wisely chose the michaelmas daisies, which were much more stable.
There's no sign of change in the weather tomorrow except that the wind is shifting into the northwest and increasing in speed, gusts up to gale force being forecast for lunchtime tomorrow.
Good to see Apis mellifera mellifera, the Black (or Dark) Honeybee in your garden. Much more suited to your climate. I remember the Black Bee breeding programme in Glenborrodale a few years ago. Gone now, but I often wondered if any escapee queens made it out into the wilds. Do you have hives of pure AMM's in your area or is this an east coast wild bee?
ReplyDeleteSorry, Derryck, I have no idea whether we have hives of black honeybees in this area, but I do remember the efforts to save it while we were on Ardnamurchan. That I took a photo of this one is pure coincidence! Jon
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