July 16, 2016
I saw about 30 bumble bees on a patch of poppies that had only about 50 blossoms. As soon as one bee left another would take its place. Flowers must cut off the nectar to get the bee to leave and then turn it back on again to attract another one. The bees were perfectly willing to share that small bouquet, unlike the hummingbirds, two of which can't share my 6000 square foot garden. One of them constantly chases the other away..
I wondered why I would still see them in the winter and found out that they eat the insects that get stuck on the sap of trees, and are never more than an hour away from starvation. Worker honeybees in the summer can sometimes last only six weeks because they work themselves to death. That's a foreign concept to me. I've been spending so much time just sitting in the garden shade that a bird landed on my shoulder..
