Bumble bees. They aren’t honey bees. Bumblebees have a much more fraught social life. (Everyone but this year’s queens die off before winter.) They aren’t meat bees aka yellow jackets; yellow jackets are aggressive little minions of the devil with mostly hairless, yellow and black bodies. Bumblebees are hairy all over. Carpenter bees have hairy thoraxes (upper bodies) and smooth bottoms. Bumblebees are rumored to be poorly designed for flight. But they are definitely flying around our garden this year. Here’s a few images of these bulbous pollinators. If you want to learn more, you can visit the Bumble Bee Watch website. We know, right? Who knew there was an organization dedicated to just bumble bees.
But let’s not forget that the humble not bumble, honey bee is the important pollinator of crops and also is striped yellow and black.
And just for comparison, here’s a member of the Devil’s supporting cast, direct from Hades, the all-around nemesis of woods people, the Yellow Jacket. And did you know their stinger is smooth so they can insert it, pull it out and sting you again? And they bite. Clearly the perfect example of a malevolent evolutionary path. At least they aren’t dressed in camo.
