This morning I took some photos of bees, busily collecting pollen from some poppy flowers in my garden.
Now that we have 4 inhabited hives, bee activity in the gardens is noticeably more than in previous years.
The poppies flowering in the edges of my garden are incredibly busy with both honey bees and native bees – bumble bees, carpenter bees and mason bees, all collecting pollen for their young.
In the following picture, you can clearly see their pollen sacs full of white poppy pollen.
Our pollination levels for fruit and veg should be very high, now we have somewhere in the region of 200,000 little helpers, as well as all the other insects here that buzz from flower to flower.
Wow – beautiful pictures – the Bees and the poppies.
The BBC is running a campaign called Bee Part of It at the moment – encouraging people to take up bee keeping or plant bee friendly plants. They also have a fab flickr site for people to upload their own bee pictures – they might be interested in yours!