June 16 2012, 6:00 pm

Today we saw a really small bee (about half the size of a honey bee) that was kind of greenish.  Looking it up in our book when we got home, we identified it as a 'small carpenter bee'.

Exciting!  We have now seen 4 different kinds of bees!

June 4 2012, 7:00 pm

Today we went out armed with our adventure backpack and library books. Annabelle is holding "Bees" by Suzanne Slade.

There were lots of honey bees ~ 20, but that was the only thing we spotted.  I got a few pictures of them.

It was a warm, sunny evening, but our bee bushes were in the shade.  Is that why the bumble bees had all disappeared?  This was our first evening observation, so we will need to compare later.

June 3, 2012, 11:00 am

Success with a picture!  Bees are REALLY hard to photograph.  They are small and fast.  However, Sang took this one:

We took out a book from the library, "Insects of the North Woods" by Jeffrey Hahn. So, now we can tell you that the above picture is a honey bee (we had correctly identified that).  What we were referring to as the small bumble bees are likely common eastern bumble bees.  What we called the large bumble bees are likely golden northern bumble bees.

Goals:  get pictures of the two bumble bees.  Also, the book shows pictures of three other kinds of bees that maybe we can spot.

Today was sunny and warm, but not too many bees.  About 5 honey bees, and 5 common eastern bumble bees.

May 27, 2012, 11:00 am

Although this is supposed to be a bee blog; today the most amazing observations were about butterflies and moths.

First; the bees - interestingly, we only saw the giant bumblebees today - no honeybees or little bumblebees. Again, about 6. Why? Possibilities:  time of day (morning vs. afternoon); weather (hot and sunny, very humid vs. warm and sunny).

We saw LOTS of different butterflies and moths.

Most striking:  a hummingbird moth.  The conversation went like this;

Sang: "Look at that moth!"

Allison: "I think it's a hummingbird.  It's about the right size, and look - it's wings are moving as a blur"

Sang: "Maybe you're right - no, wait, it has antennae.  Can you see them?"

Allison and Annabelle: "Oh yeah..."

Googling when we got home gave us the identification, but I did not find a picture to do it justice.  The one we saw was very stripey and about 2 inches.

Also observed: a medium sized (inch) orange butterfly that when it closed its wings upon landing, had a brown patch.

Also, a yellow medium sized butterfly.

Also, a tiny grey moth/butterfly.  It was so small, we could not determine which.  The way we know to determine the difference is that when a butterfly lands, it closes its wings.  When a moth lands, its wings  stay spread open.

Reserved some books from the library on insects and bees so that hopefully our identification will get better. And, again - we should bring camera and take pictures!

May 25, 2012, 3:30 pm

This is our first day of observations.  Unfortunately, we did not take any "before" pictures. Before we went on vacation - the bushes had not yet blossomed - and thus, no bees. All of a sudden when we came back - blossoms and bees galore!

We are observing 4 bushes.

We saw three kinds of bees:  Honey bees (~10), small bumblebees (~10) and big bumblebees (~6).  

Honey bees are golden and smooth.

Bumblebees are fuzzy and yellow, with large yellow pollen sacs on their back legs.

We will probably try to do some more research and figure out the proper identifications of these.

Here is a picture of our bee bush:

You can kind of see a bee in this picture, but not very well.  We were hoping that the iPod would take good enough pictures, but looks like not.  Next trip out, we will try the camera so we can take pictures of the bees.

Introduction

Last summer (2011), Annabelle and Mommy enjoyed bee watching at some bushes (which we named the "bee bushes") near our apartment.  Every time we walked by, we would stop and observe - and were amazed at the number and variety of bees.  This year, we decided to start a blog to record our observations.