Garden – Page 2 – the katsura tree

The North East Bee Hunt has been great for helping me recognise bumblebees in the garden. You don’t need to know much to be able to distinguish the common bumblebees. I’ve gone from “they’re all just bees” to being able to recognise the ones that come to visit the garden.

Tree bumblebees in blue tit nestbox

I was bemused and mildly perturbed when tree bumblebees set up home in a nest box normally used by blue tits. Just a neat socially-distanced two metres from where we sometimes sit out when it’s sunny. I suspected, rightly, that they were like the Borg, and would ignore us as long as they did not consider us an immediate threat.

There’s a really good article on the Bumblebee conservation trust website that explains all about tree bumblebees and their, at times, somewhat mystifying behaviour. For the moment, I for one welcome my new bumbleebee overlords, and, in a month or two, when they’ve packed up and gone, I suspect I’ll quite miss them.