Home of the Practically Perfect Pink Phlox and other native plants for pollinators

Friday, October 3, 2014

I appreciate the honeybees that visit my garden

Isn't she beautiful!

All the honeybees we see foraging for nectar and pollen are female and unless we keep hives we'll probably never see a male bee.
The worker honeybees' jobs include: caring for larvae (baby bees), making wax, building honeycomb, cleaning up the hive, storing pollen, cooling the hive, making honey, guarding the hive and collecting pollen and nectar. They are busy little creatures and I feel fortunate that they stayed still long enough for me to snap a few photos!

I appreciate that they pollinate flowers as they forage for pollen and nectar. I also have a fine appreciation for their honey making abilities! 
Which brings me around to yesterday morning when I noticed this pink sign in a neighboring yard.

Of course I called! 

I stopped by last night to meet Jodi the beekeeper and her bees. What a delightful surprise! She and her husband Matt are native plant gardeners! They're removing invasives! They've built a rain garden to solve their water drainage problems! They have hives!

Hillwood is lucky to have them! I am lucky that they live around the corner from me.
Of course, you all know that my beloved Bumbles and other native bees are first and foremost in my heart, but, a gardener has to get honey and what could be better than honey made by bees that might have visited my garden!

Now that's sweet!
Have a honey of a weekend...
xoxogail

It's your garden, plant what ever you want and please, remember to never, ever, ever, ever, use pesticides. I mean never!

In case you want to read earlier pollinator posts~

Now Is The Time To Bee-gin Thinking About Bees ( here)
This Is The Place To Bee ( here)
If You Could Plant Only One Plant In Your Garden~Don't (here)
Must Bee The Season of The Witch (here)
Go Bare In Your Garden (here)
We can't All Be Pretty Pollinators (here)
Eye, Eye Skipper, Big Eyed Pollinators (here)
What's In Your Garden (here)
Royalty In The Garden~Monarch Butterfly (here)
Carpenter Bees (here)
Got Wildflowers?(here)
It's Spring and A Gardener's Thoughts Are On Pollinators (here)
The Wildflower and The Bee (here)
A Few Good Reasons To Plant Milkweek (here)
Got Shade? You Can Have Pollinators ( (here)
A Pollinator friendly Shrub (here)
Big Goings On at C and L (here)
Where Have All My Pollinators Gone (here)

Other bee posts you might want to read~

Count Yourself Lucky To Have Hoverflies ( here)
Bumblebee Hotel (here)
Still Taking Care Of Bzzness (here)
My Sweet Embraceable You (here)



Gail Eichelberger is a gardener and therapist in Middle Tennessee. She loves wildflowers and native plants and thoroughly enjoys writing about the ones she grows at Clay and Limestone. She reminds all that the words and images are the property of the author and cannot be used without written permission.

17 comments:

  1. How cool to be able to get honey from bees who probably did visit your flowers! Nice photos, too! It's always fun to see the fuzziness on them.

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  2. I have no doubt those bees have enjoyed your bountiful beautiful buffet many times! How cool to have a kindred spirit nearby!

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  3. Oh, that is sweet indeed! I don't think it gets any better. Maybe they'll let you come and photograph their hives. I love the name of their company too. So cute!~~Dee

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  4. Girl power! Too cute. =) Is there anything more relaxing than watching bees?

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  5. Honey Bees are the sweetest! They are all about Girl Power! Love it!!

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  6. Yum! Great shots of the bees. I love that they're so close the honey might have been made from your own flowers.

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  7. We buy honey from a beekeeper in our area - so good!
    Love your beautiful photos!
    Have a great week-end!
    Lea

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  8. Amazing photos. Thanks for this uplifting post :)

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  9. Great photos of your bees. I didn't see too many honey bees in our garden this year. Plenty of bumbles tho. I hope you have a great weekend too.

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  10. Great post and Links! I was on the Bridge of Flowers yesterday and the flowers were just full of bees. Mostly bumblebees I think. You can see why they were there on the Bridge's Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/pages/Bridge-of-Flowers/130369333692022 I didn't get photos of them, or of all the bees in my garden. They make me so happy.

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  11. how wonderful to actually meet a neighbour who shares the gardening for biodiversity mindset.
    Instead of - you what? Eww bugs!!

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  12. Sweet (literally and figuratively)! And you made some new friends who share your love of native plant gardening. Perfect!

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  13. Great photos! I saw something on TV a week or so ago and they were saying that you can tell the age of a bee by how furry it is. Younger bees have a fuzz and the older ones are balder. Your photos are clear enough to see what they mean, the bee in the second last bee photo is much fuzzier than the ones in the earlier shots. Must get myself a decent camera...

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  14. What a wonderful find and kindred spirits...love the pics too!!

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  15. Gorgeous photos! I find that honeybees are the hardest of all to photograph--they're just too busy to stay still. How neat to have honey from bees that may have visited your garden! It reminds of the times a local beekeeper used to bring his hives to my Dad's farm so they could enjoy the clover for awhile. He always gave Dad some honey to share, and it certainly was delicious!

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  16. I didn't realize they had fuzzy bodies too! Thanks for the great close-ups. Just finished a gigantic croissant from a local bakery - that honey would have been perfect. Thank goodness, I don't have to fit back into a hive.
    Happy Canadian Thanksgiving!
    http://barbarasgardenchronicles.blogspot.com

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  17. Oh that's awesome to have honey made by bees that potentially foraged in your garden! Several people have told me I should keep bees (probably since I garden with them in mind), but I think that would be out of my skill range. I love seeing them happily foraging on all the plants though!

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"Insects are the little things that run the world." Dr. E O Wilson