Late arrival of the Early Bumblebee !

The flowering Blackcurrant in the garden has once again been the centre of attention for the local Bee's. First to arrive this year were the large Buff Tailed Queens, at the same time Western Honey Bee's started to appear. I eagerly awaited the arrival of the Hairy-footed Flower Bees, they did not disappoint, and are still hard at work gathering nectar and pollen, occasionally bumping other bees of the flowering blooms.

The Garden Bumblebee has been around in good numbers now for the last few weeks, and by far the most common visitor to the garden.

Now at long last, the so called Early Bumblebee has arrived, to give its proper name the Early nesting Bumblebee, I suppose by rights this should have been the first Bumblebee on the scene as they begin their colony cycle as early as February, much earlier than other species. better late than never.

These Early Bumblebees are quite easy to identify being much smaller than other Bumblebees, there is a yellow band on both the thorax and abdomen, the tail can be a peachy orange colour.

Not to many of these being seen at the moment , just a few individual queens, the workers are very much smaller and the males have yellow hair on the face, easily identifiable.