Get ready...it's happening...the annual World Bee Day...
Monday, May 20 is World Bee Day, as declared by the United Nations "to raise awareness of the importance of pollinators, the threats they face, and their contribution to sustainable development."
"The goal is to strengthen measures aimed at protecting bees and other pollinators, which would significantly contribute to solving problems related to the global food supply and eliminate hunger in developing countries," the website points out. "We all depend on pollinators and it is, therefore, crucial to monitor their decline and halt the loss of biodiversity."
Lately we've been noticing multiple species of bumble bees in our pollinator garden in Vacaville. One of them appears to be Bombus bifarius.
The bumbles we've seen over the years in our pollinator garden--B. californicus, B. melanopygus, B.vosnesenskii and B. bifarius--especially like Coreopsis, a genus of flowering plants in the aster family, Asteraceae. It's also called tickseed.
Now that's not a good name for such a showy flower!
Attached Images:
A bumble bee forages on Coreopsis in Vacaville. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Yellow pollen from Coreopsis covers this bumble bee like gold dust. (Photo by Kathy Keatley)
Here's a good foraging spot on the Coreopsis. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Wings up, time to go. A bumble bee ready to take flight from a Coreopsis. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)