Bee here now
Jun. 3rd, 2009 08:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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.
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.
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Date: 2009-06-03 03:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-03 03:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-03 04:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-03 05:17 pm (UTC)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.
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Date: 2009-06-03 09:35 pm (UTC)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.
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Date: 2009-06-03 09:42 pm (UTC)Anyway, great story you linked to. Tim Curry, he gives you buh.
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Date: 2009-06-04 02:58 pm (UTC)-- Denys