Starting to pick more raspberries

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Both black and red raspberries are ripening now. I like the flavor of the black ones more, but growing them has turned out to be a bit of a pain.

Found some pollinators in the chives

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Sunday was a beautiful sunny day to go visit the Pollinator plot at the community garden. The chives have been flowering for some days, and I was looking forward to seeing the bees. Sure enough, the chives were hosting a bee party.

Bees in the spring

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I saw a honeybee visit the crocus today. A bumblebee seemed to be looking for a good spot under the crocuses to start her nest. Crocuses nestle in the sheltered pocket where snapdragons have stayed green all winter.  Crocuses bloom around the plum tree, which has so many buds of blossoms to come, you see it all nubbly from the kitchen.

The first bees of the year are bringing in spring.

A day of good bee hunting

I enjoyed hosting today on the Life-Friendly Garden Tour. Nice people stopped by and let me show off my bees. If you’re interested at all in bees, you know about honeybees going missing. If you want to help honeybees, the best way is to keep a hive. It’s not hard, so they say, and it means more bees in your neighbor’s yard. But I want to support the native bees, and that’s even easier.

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Don’t use chemicals (the theme of the Tour!).

Grow flowers (preferably native flowers).

Avoid disturbing the ground (and leave some bare).

What’s behind those leaves?

Bees! When you look at this wall of grape leaves imagine you hear buzzing.

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The usual suspects are in the goldenrod

August started early in the goldenrod.

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They’ve been flowering for a couple weeks and bees love it. I’ll try to catch more pics of the little bees  later. For now, here’s a bumblebee,  a honeybee, and a mystery wasp.

More coneflowers, more bees

More coneflowers have answered the first coneflower‘s call.

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This is one of the great bee flowers. My trinity of bees — honeybees, bumblebees, and Agapostemon — visit them, methodically going through the spikes of pollen in the centers. When the Halictus bees are done with the sunflowers, they’ll come to the coneflowers too. Together they prepare the coneflowers to set seed for the goldfinches to eat.

And the coneflowers roll on to the next year.

A buffet for bees in the catmint

The mound of catmint, Nepeta “Walker’s Low“, has bloomed all May and June, attracting an amazing array of bees.

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A raspberry and a blueberry from the bees

Today’s harvest was brought to you by the bees.

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Honeybees and small carpenter bees in the raspberries. Bumblebees, too, but they’re too fast for me to get a good picture. I caught a Lasioglossum bee in the flowerhead of one of the scallions I planted last fall. And the coriander flower is showing off one of my favorite syphrid flies, the beautifully patterned Toxomerus.

Bees are up!

Honeybee gathering crocus pollen

First I saw sunlight catching on insects flying over the garden, but I wasn’t sure I saw anything big enough. Then I definitely caught sight of yellow and black stripes.  I walked over to the crocuses and heard that old, familar buzz. And there she was, the first bee of the year!

She’s definitely a honeybee, though browner than most. And while I got this picture, a big fat bee passed by, possibly a shiny-butt Carpenter bee.

The bees are ready, too.