I've always had a love of these hard-working buggers. It must come from my Grandad, he loved his honey bees! But with the recent well-documented problem of colony collapse syndrome, our focus should at least consider these little guys when planning on what plants we want in our gardens ie why not make them Bee-friendly :~) (http://www.generous.org.uk/actions/home/192/make-your-garden-bumblebee-friendly)
The out-laws visited recently and whilst here we went to Wakehurst, a Kew-managed garden in the Sussex countryside where the pictures you see on this blog were taken. We were fortunate enough to bump into a real bee-keeper who told us that 1 productive hive can produce over 60lbs of honey each season... SIXTY POUNDS! Another reason to bee-friend them (pun intended).
Consider also that most of the pollination that takes place to your fruit and vegetable is carried out by the industrious bee, without which, would mean we'd be out there cotton bud (q-tip to the Yanks) in hand cross pollinating all the plants ourselves!
And finally as that intellectual lightweight Einstein once said (although it is an unattributed quote) "If the bee disappears from the surface of the Earth, man would have no more then 4 years left to live. No more bees, no more pollination, no more men!"
You get the picture.
