Bee here now

[randy_byers]

The ceanothus hedge out front has bloomed, and it is crawling with bees. I saw honeybees in two different places on Vancouver Island the past couple of weekends, but I still don't see any around here. The ceanothus is crawling with two different kinds of bumblebee. I saw some bumblebees at Mossybanks on Sunday that looked absolutely enormous in comparison. They looked two or three times as big as the larger of the two types that I see around our house. It's also curious that there are a bunch of ceanothus bushes along the Burke-Gilman trail that bloom before mine do and don't ever have any bees on them. The flower clusters are almost identical; maybe a little smaller. Are they different enough that they don't attract bees, or are there no bees in the vicinity? Hard to believe the latter is true, but then I have no idea where the bumblebees in our neighborhood live, unless it's in the dead trees in the park up the street.

Update: Closer inspection of the ceanothus this morning discovered a third variety of bee. It looked somewhat like a honeybee, but maybe a little larger and with slightly different coloring. I'm far from an expert on the matter, but perhaps this was the elusive mason bee that I keep hearing about.

I also spotted two more ceanothuses in bloom on 36th as I walked to work -- one of them with bees, the other without. I'm still curious why the difference.

Comments

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

Many bumblebees live in shallow burrows just underground, a major argument against going barefoot. I learned this many years ago by stepping on a bumblebee burrow and hearing angry buzzing. Fortunately for both me and the bees, I hadn't stepped hard, and I moved my foot right away.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Huh. I'm surprised I've never run across that myself, but then I *am* Mr. Oblivious. Of course there was the time that my brother and I threw rocks at a nest of wasps in the ground. That did not end well.

[janetl.livejournal.com]

My ceanothus in Portland is crawling with bees. I didn't get close to see what kind(s) they were.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Hi! I see we have a couple of Friends (and even a school -- PSU) in common, but do I know you?

Sounds like you must have the same variety of ceanothus, if it just now bloomed. Lots of the other ones I see around Seattle bloom earlier than mine. Maybe this is a particularly bee-friendly variety.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Our cotoneasters are absolutely heaving with bees. There's a probability cloud of them around the bushes whenever the sun is up. And because we never can get our quotations quite right, Hal and I say "It gives you bees," whenever we walk down past the cotoneaster by the steps to get to the driveway. (Clearly what we should say is That'll give you, er, bees, but, like I say, we never seem to get quotations quite right. And besides, when we say it, it isn't meant as an expression of sympathy for embarrassments past. We mean it literally: Cotoneaster, it gives you bees.)

So bees, we got. Three kinds, at least. Maybe four. Including honey bees, definitely, which I guess was the point I was flailing after before I got off on the internet legends of Tim Curry.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Ah, that's the name of those plants! We saw a cotoneaster at Mossybanks that was full of honey bees. The bumblebees there were feeding off a different plant. Bee segregation!

Anyway, great story you linked to. Tim Curry, he gives you buh.

[(Anonymous)]

The Dr. Frankenduck image was pretty damn cool, too.

-- Denys