The past few days I have enjoyed strolling through the yard and noticing all the honey bee activity, along with other insects. We have a lot of white dutch clover in our yard, and besides the raspberries, there isn’t a whole lot blooming right now. With four of our bee colonies close by, that means there are a significant number of workers deployed in just those two areas.

Watching bees on clover is nice, but also you feel a bit sorry for them as they flit quickly from blossom to blossom. It seems like most blossoms are already dry and it takes them a while to find one with the sweet nectar. At the end of May there was a nectar flow going in the area, and our overwintered colony here was strong enough to fill a whole honey super during that week and a half or so. That is a bit exciting because for comparison, we did not have any honey supers on hives in May in 2017 (was a cooler spring last year). I wonder how the bees fare when the lawn gets mowed, like it did yesterday? The 6 foot deck comes on them at a pretty good clip and I’m sure some of them are left spinning in its wake. We had our small group study here last night and one of the girls got stung, accidentally stepping on one of these.  There is a lot of bare foot activity in our yard, so I’m somewhat surprised it doesn’t happen more often.

This next photo is of the 6 linden trees along our driveway. They have been growing a bit each year, and now they are of a size that when they bloom, they could satisfy many thousands of bees in a short time.

Linden (basswood) buds getting ready to pop! When they do, it’s going to be a crazy free-for-all in these trees. Hopefully, the rain is kinder to us this year and doesn’t wash out the blossoms right away.

Next, I walk over to our wild-flower patches we started in our lawn two years ago. I’m afraid the weeks choke out most of the prairie plants, but it is still a nice colorful area anyway. The below series of four images are taken just moving my phone camera closer and closer to one of the daisy blooms…

This little insect is most likely an Augochlora Sweat Bee. They are nifty, being all metallic green/gold in color, but a bit smaller than the type of sweat bee I pictured last year with a vivid green thorax, but striped abdomen. And she has a little friend above just hanging there…

On the the far east side of our property are the raspberry vines. Jana worked to thin them out earlier in the spring, and the weeds took over. So we had to pull the weeds. Here is a before shot with Sadie, and then an after shot…

A lot of the old growth died on the top-most sections of their vines, but there are still a lot of raspberry canes. And the pollination activities have been intense. It is quite relaxing to come and watch the activity, the blooming, and the fruiting. Below is your classic moth – the antenna are feathery and like a comb. And those dark eyes against an orange head make it look a bit scary up close 🙂

And next we have what I thought was a butterfly because the antennae are slender and have small bulbs on the end. But alas, when I looked it up, it is still classified as moth – the Eight-Spotted Forrester.

I wondered if this guy might collect pollen pellets as well with those bright orange spots. But no, they are just markings. OK, not “just” – these creatures are incredibly ‘painted’. And look at that tongue! It snakes around between the antennae in this photo into the nectary between the stamen cluster and the outer leafage of the blossom.

And last, is one of the all-time best pollinators around – a large bumble bee. I enjoy watching the big bumbles as they dwarf the dozens of honey bees that are flying around them.

Hope you enjoyed my walk around the yard and the close-knit relationship God’s creatures have with the ever-changing flora. Time to cool off with a tall glass of lime-aide!