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.