Bees, as many of you know, are one of my favourite garden visitors, so providing them with food is important to me. Bumbles are currently busy feeding on comfrey, sage, lupins, foxgloves and delphiniums. The early bumblebees seem to really like the comfrey, while the carder bees are concentrating on the sage. While tailed bees I have seen on buttercup and lupin, while the big garden bumblebee queens that are still around are going for the foxgloves as well as comfrey. It just shows that having a variety of flowers in your garden is important if you want your help a range of bees.
One lovely new sighting for the garden was a humming bird hawk moth, feeding on sage flowers. This is an amazing day flying moth that looks, and acts like a humming bird. We hadn’t seen one since the time we lived in the UK, so great addition to our garden list. if you want to see what it looks out check out this link.
Humming bird hawk moth – in a blur!
Vegetable garden update to follow soon.
Lovely! I took a video of the bees enjoying my raspberry flowers, I must get around to posting it. I will have a huge crop this year! Blueberries not so much, unfortunately. The bees love them as they open so early but I just didn’t get many flowers this year.
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Our blueberries are the same. Our raspberries are mostly the autumn variety so will have to wait a bit longer for those. Though the tay berries are looking promising:-)
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Did you give your blueberries a trim last autumn? I was careful only to cut out old wood but maybe I messed up.
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Same here – our patch is very weedy this year, which probably hasn’t helped. To be honest they always seems to struggle a bit, which is a shame as they are so nice!
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Extraordinary foxglove!
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Do they usually do this? It’s first time I have grown cultivated foxgloves and I have never this this before. It’s only on top flower. The rest hang down as proper bells. And it’s not just one flower either!
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the colour contrast and detail of the bee in lupins is magnificent – have never seen foxgloves put a top knot bell side up
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Thank you – i know that foxglove does look a bit odd!
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Wonderful colours. Love how the white of the white-tailed bumblebee contrasts with the pink of the lupins. And the intense blue of the delphiniums sems impossible to be real.
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Thank you. I do love that blue delphinium, and the bees like it too, particularly the big garden bumblebee queens!
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