#british bees

[mymblesbuir]

a BIG fuzzy buzzy friend!

[paizleyrayz]

happy things 

[amberstringerphotography]

~ Orange Tailed Mining Bee ~ 

[jaketeachesdeath]

Bees

Part 1

Did you know that there are over 275 species of Bee in the UK?

And did you know that only 24 of them are Bumblebees?

Here are 5 of them. From left to right:

Common Carder bee (Male), Early Bumblebee (Queen I think), Buff-tailed Bumblebee, Red-tailed Bumblebee and Tree Bumblebee.

Very common bees indeed, normally you see the Early Bumblebee first hence the name. At the beginning of spring you'll notice the big bees and these will be the queens. The Tree Bumblebee is doing exceptionally well considering it was first recorded here in 2001!

Here is another Bee

This is the Brown Banded Carder Bee. Isnt she stunning? This one was purchased so isnt pinned.

Its a scare Bumblebee and hard to distinguish from the other two Carder bees. Most of the recent records are coastal but they do prefer open grassland with lots of clover and knapweed and such.

The rest of the bees are solitary for the most part minus the Honeybee. Most of them dont have a common name either!

[feltpool]

I have bees!!

What I’m pretty sure are white tailed bumblebees have set up home in a birdbox on the wall of my house. They’re hard to film well because not only are they level with the second floor and I had to lean out of a bedroom window to film them, but also the camera on this phone is shit.

Thanks to the local birds for providing the audio accompaniment. Noisy little buggers!

Hopefully they won’t cause any issues, but if they do I should be able to contact the local beekeepers group about them.

[llywela13]

When I first moved into my flat, the ‘garden’ was just a scrubby patch of mud and couch grass. It wasn’t especially big, but bigger than any garden I’d ever had before, so I decided to turn that muddy scrap of wannabe-lawn into a proper garden, and when I dug and planted the herbaceous borders, my main aim was to encourage bees and other pollinators.

That was almost seven years ago, and I don’t think I’d ever realised quite how successful I’d been until this spring, in lockdown, when for the first time I’ve had the time to actually sit down and audit the different varieties of bee buzzing around my little garden. I mean, just look at all these little beauties!

Here’s a white-tailed bumblebee, enjoying the erysimum bowle’s mauve

Your classic honeybee

Heath bumblebee

This little guy here is a common carder bee

This is another carder bee, but much paler in colour - I think it might be a shrill carder bee, which is a lot less common, but I’m not 100% sure

Is this another carder bee, here on the red campion? Or possibly an early bumblebee? It isn’t always easy to tell! I’m including it anyway just because I like the photo

This one is definitely an early bumblebee, which adores this heuchera

Buff-tailed bumblebee, bumbling around the foxglove

Garden bumblebee on dahlia

Red-tailed bumblebee, this one enjoying the knautia

Now this guy, making the most the clover, is a tree bumblebee

And this one is a hairy-footed flower bee

Leaf-cutter bee, pictured on a dahlia it hasn’t yet cut to ribbons

Aaaaaand I have no idea what this one is. The upper body is shiny black but the tail is fuzzy and grey. Any ideas?

So that’s...*counts*...at least 13 different species of bee, all pictured in one not very big suburban garden within the space of a fortnight. Not bad going! It just goes to show that if you make provision for the bees, they will come!

[thewandcarver]

Beeswax Wooden Wand Polish

#FlockBN #TWDA

For as long as we have been making witch wands and other wooden witchcraft tools, amulets, talismans, and jewellery, we have also made our own blend of beeswax polish.  For the most part, I don’t mind sharing the ingredients, however, I won’t be sharing my recipe. You would need to get it just right. And do bear in mind that this is our intellectual propertyand we advise not to make your own…

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