It was a lovely, somewhat steamy late-spring afternoon, and the bees were busily at work along Piney Woods Church Road, dashing from clover to clover. I watched one highly enthusiastic bumblebee darting from one flower head to the next, with each new landing causing the blossom to flop over onto the ground. I suppose, given the clover’s need to get pollinated, it was worth the weight.
I have always been fond of bumblebees. They have a charming furriness about them, and they are not very aggressive toward humans — certainly compared with paper wasps and yellowjackets. They have such charming alternative early English names, too — the drumbledrane, the dumbledore, or, the one which Charles Darwin knew them by, the humblebee. I photographed this one ambling from one henbit bloom to another on a delightfully mild spring afternoon.
