Monday, July 29, 2013

Give bees a chance

I saw a bumper sticker a few days ago that said, "Give Bees a Chance." It was referring the problem of colony collapse in bee hives that seems to be threatening various crops in parts of the USA. I guess they're worried about almonds in California, for example. I checked the native plant garden in the back yard for bees and found lots of them. Honey bees, waspy looking bees and the distinctive bumbles. I tried to get some photos of the workers and was at least partially successful. They were all over the purplish flowers in the photo. I don't know the name of the flowers, but the bees were pretty fond of them. The bees are doing just fine in this part of the Saintly City.


The flowers, even the commercial ones are very pretty this time of year. These are growing in a pot on the patio, sitting there radiating their beauty.


It was a really nice day. One of the nicest of the month, if not in the history of days. We had nine geezers at the tennis courts today. We've evolved ways to deal with odd numbers by playing a version of five person tennis that rotates in a new player after every game. It makes it hard to keep track of the score, but no one seems to mind. We play and then go home and forget the results anyhow. That's kind of the beauty of playing with codgers.

 Today we played a bit over two hours, and we finished it was 75ยบ F.

3 comments:

Santini said...

Your first photo looks a lot like the flower in my first photo, but a different color.

The Rose of Sharon bushes here are full of bees. There seems to be no problem in this area. Good thing, what with all the fruit trees and such.

Jimi said...

I used google images and found the flower.

Wild bergamot.

Santini said...

Wild bergamot is a great name for a flower. Mine are too far gone from the rain and too late in their flowering season to be sure that it is the same thing.