Bumblebees – Pollinators at Work

Bees shouldn’t be so nice and fuzzy.
– Cynthia Copeland Lewis –

My new Macro lens has been working as hard as the insects in the yard! Particularly busy are the Bumblebees. These are wild, native bees that form small colonies underground. They are very efficient pollinators in our part of the world.  In the fall all but the fertilized queens will die.

Aerodynamically, the bumble bee shouldn’t be able to fly, but the bumble bee doesn’t know it so it goes on flying anyway.
– Mary Kay Ash –

This is another type of Bumblebee,  not nearly as colorful as the one with the orange band on its rump!

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I’m looking forward to looking for more bugs now that I can take portraits of them! Apparently our Province has about 20,000 species of insects – I wonder how many I will find in my backyard! However many there are, there is an interesting ebb and flow of populations which I can see in the insect damage done to some trees and plants.

What kind of insects are the pollinators in your yard? Do you plant anything special that they like?