(click to enlarge to full size)
Cornish Native Black Bee on Common Hogweed Umbellifer
The British Black Bee (Apis mellifera mellifera), or European Dark Honeybee, was common until the beginning of the 20th Century. Fully adapted for the cooler climate she was responsible for the pollination of the wild flowers you see in the British Isles today. Sadly a virus practically wiped the species out. I can’t be certain that this IS one of those descendants, but it does have a very dark bottom. Whether it is or it isn’t we need to do everything we can to encourage our bees.
Source: The Barefoot Beekeeper
Earth laughs in flowers 
Fabulous macro, Jude. Love your black-bottomed bee. 🙂
Great photo – the detail when you enlarge it is great. I am trying to fill my garden with bee friendly plants too. Luckily lavender, which bees love, is not on the preferred menu for slugs and snails (which my garden is FULL of) so I have a few of them. I’ve also found that slugs don’t care for agapanthus, which the bees like too, so I’m adding to my collection of them. 🙂
Good to know, I have a lot of snails here too!
I get quite demoralised when yet another plant falls victim to them, so I am gradually changing over to having things that slugs and snails don’t bother with.
Such as?
More lavender (can’t have too much of that!), more agapanthuses (is that the plural?), more geraniums, ornamental grass, fuschias (so far the slugs haven’t bothered with that and it comes back every year after looking rather dead in the autumn and winter so I will probably plant some more), crocosmia (but not the huge stuff – it takes up too much room so I have started thinning it out), astilbes seem to be unaffected, so I might try a few more of them. I’m sure there is other stuff, but I can’t remember what!
OK. I have most of those, except the grasses and astilbes. And more lavender sounds good. I love lavender 🙂
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