It’s a great time of year for bee watching! As there are so few flowers out, staking out a sunny patch with a few blooms will guarantee you some brilliant bees! That’s exactly what I did and one of the biggest visitors to my sunny patch was this lemon yellow striped bumble. Like other social insects, the queen emerges from hibernation early in the spring and starts the colony over again by laying a few eggs that hatch as workers; these workers tend the young and nest. Compared to honey bee colonies, which can number 50,000 individuals, bumble bee colonies are small, with only about 200 workers in each.
By River Six
