As pictured here, you can see that the garden is a mess, but we enjoy a nice Sunday breakfast watching the bees.
It is late Summer and the availability of forage in the garden (for the bees at least) is reducing, but there are still some flowers around. The bees' favourite thing is the Echinops:
And they continue to forage on the remaining raspberry flowers, but most of those are now turning to fruit:
The bees are on watermint:
This forager was collecting pollen from a Japanese anemone. Look at that nice full pollen basket:
The Virginia creeper growing on the front of the house is dense with honeybees. The flowers are small, and it's only because the plant buzzes so loudly with bees that I notice it flowering at all. I wonder whether visitors notice the humming of bees around the front door.
July is a good time of year for foraging honeybees. Stourbridge Common and Ditton Meadows are within 200 m of the apiary, and the bees are busy there. Here's what we found them foraging on:
Thistles
Thistles are a source of abundant nectar, if the scent of honey in the air around them is anything to go by.
Bramble
It seems early this year - July blackberries! In the second picture (click on the image to expand it), you can see a full pollen basket on the worker's leg.
Himalayan balsam
If you can find the honeybee in this picture, you might be able to see that the back of its thorax is white with pollen from the plant. The bees enter the flowers, stay inside for a couple of seconds, then reverse out.
