A sunny and much warmer day and jobs included lawn edging and planting out Pinks, Petunias and Aeoniums and moving other plants from the greenhouse and into the cold frames for hardening off.
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| Bees in the apple trees |
Whilst lawn edging, I heard a loud droning - rather like machinery. Wondering what it was, I looked up into the Prunus Serrula above and saw that the entire tree was alive with bees. I have never seen or heard so many bees at one time. The noise was astonishing. They were definitely not swarming and all were busy going about their business. On many of them, I could see the pockets on their hind legs bulging with pollen. This is a big mature tree and it was literally full of bees! The funny thing is that this tree is grown for its shiny peeling bark which is a real feature in winter. The flowers are small, pale and insignificant. It is covered in blossom all of which appeared to be moving with the vast numbers of bees moving around the blooms. We hear nothing but doom and gloom about the ever decreasing numbers of bees, their decline due to Verroa and sudden hive collapse which made this all the more amazing! It was like a plague of bees infesting a single tree. It's not as if there weren't huge numbers in the apple trees 'cos there were - just nothing like the prunus! Absolutely no shortage of pollinators here!
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| A whole tree of bees! |
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