Herb Riddle's photos with the keyword: Bee

Seatbelt lights on, landing imminent! Summer has arrived and with it an army of busy bees. Enjoy this garden bee exploring our garden ‘Johnson Blue’ Geranium blooms. See adjacent photo (PiP) for full landing exploration. Best full screen (naturally) Enjoy the day.

A friendly bee takes to the pollen in this Geranium flower in our garden. This is only one of the 270 species that live in Britain. They are in the order Hymenoptera. See PiP (adjacent photo) for flying bee. Best full screen (naturally) Enjoy the day.

As early summer starts to take a hold in our garden, the bees are out in force. Here we see a ‘Common carder bee’ with its all-brown colouring and no white tail, collecting nectar from our Azalea bush. See PiP for a White tailed bumblebee Enjoy full screen.

On posting my last photo of Manchester's Victoria station I realised that I had never actually posted any of the Manchester Bees here. So here are a few, seen on my trip here with our Ipernity friend David G Johnson in July 2018. It was in that year that a special celebration was to be had in celebration of the Manchester worker Bee. More than a hundred were dotted around Manchester, most painted by local school children in a competition. As you can see there were some splendid ones around. Enjoy full screen. More info: secretmanchester.com/bees-in-manchester

‘Bombus spp’, as seen on our garden Lavatera bush. Today, the bush’s many flowering blooms were full of them. Another chance therefore to try my macro lens again. The white spots are pollen seeds from the centre of these flowers that this bee has just rubbed itself over. These large, hairy bees are generally black with varying degrees of yellow banding. Look closely at flowering plants and you’ll probably spot several species. Common bumblebees include garden, buff-tailed, red-tailed, white-tailed and field bumblebees. They are social insects, living in colonies of up to 200 workers. Queens hibernate underground during the winter, emerging in spring to find suitable nest sites – for example, abandoned mouse holes. Each queen builds a nest of dried grasses and then lays about a dozen eggs that hatch into workers – sterile females. The workers gather pollen and nectar to feed later batches of grubs. New queens and males hatch at the end of the season and mate. The males, workers and old queens die; new queens hibernate. Bumblebees are not aggressive and will only sting if they feel threatened. They are important pollinators of many plants and fruiting trees eating nectar and pollen Nice full size.

Taken alongside the river, on my next photo here.