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Happy
Christmas! With nothing much better to do on a cold
and frosty morning, I caught up with some pressing
garden chores. My neighbour's oak has only just
dropped its leaves, mostly into my garden, so raking
was on the agenda. It is a tedious task so I took
frequent breaks to wander round inspecting the garden.
I was pleased to see that a honeysuckle I planted last
year has flowered early, as the label assured me it
would. I
bent to see if there was any fragrance - and found I
had been forestalled by a bumblebee. It was plunging
into the flowers to sip nectar and had clearly also
been collecting pollen.
I was
surprised to realise that this was a worker. One can
imagine a hibernating queen waking up in a warm spell
but, despite the bright sun, there was still frost on
the lawn. However, according to the books, bumblebee
colonies die out in late summer and workers live at
most for a couple of months.
It is a
mystery how this one has survived. Perhaps there is a
doomed colony of ageing bumblebee workers spinning out
a precarious existence without hope for the future,
like astronauts marooned on a space station. They
could be eking out the stores of pollen and nectar
that remained in the nest after the young queens and
males and are supplementing them by foraging on the
few late flowers. Ivy would have been a great help
earlier in the autumn; dead-nettles and viburnum
bodnantense are in flower in the garden at the moment.
But I cannot see there have been enough flowers to
sustain any bees.
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