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.