Spiffy

There's something absolutely luscious, I think, about a very fresh male Early Bumblebee. We have a lot of these Bombus pratorum boys in the garden at the moment, so at least one nearby nest has just released its 'crop'. Their task now is to patrol the area in search of the new queens who will emerge from the nests very soon, and in order to keep up their strength while they wait and search, they eat voraciously. They're also very fast though, dipping erratically in and out of different flowers before zooming off on patrol again. This makes them a little tricky to capture on camera, but the cosmos I planted recently in an old Belfast sink on the patio has a lot of blooms in a small area, which makes the task easier.

Because it nests early and produces its first generation of males and queens fast, Bombus pratorum can usually generate a second brood later in the summer - a characteristic that entomologists call 'bivoltine'. Once the fresh males have caught up with the newly emerged queens and impregnated them, their job is done and they will fade away and die. But those queens will immediately begin work to found their own nests, and the cycle will turn once again. In colder northern regions the overwintered queens emerge from hibernation later, and there the species remains univoltine (that is, it goes through just one generation per year); but in some very mild areas of the country the Early Bumblebee can also be late, remaining active right into the winter. One of the secrets of the species' success is that the queens will exploit a range of different spaces for their nests, including disused rodent burrows, grass clumps, holes in trees, bird nests and nest boxes, and even the roof spaces of houses.

For the record, another Large Red Damselfly emerged from our patio pond this morning, giving us a running total of twelve successful eclosures from thirteen attempts. I confess that a little human intervention was required to prevent the massacre of the innocent by diving beetles, but I don't think we need to dwell on that. I also spotted a very fresh Large Red down at the wildlife pond, though I couldn't find his exuvia, so he may have emerged somewhere else. 

At Cleeve Prior Community Orchard the two male Four-spotted Chasers I mentioned last Sunday were still ruling the roost at the two largest ponds - having seemingly reached a tacit agreement to take one each, so they don't have to keep clashing with each other. I also spotted an immature Scarce Chaser flying among the fruit trees, but failed to get a lens on him. Best news of the day, Odonata-wise, was the appearance of around twenty fresh White-legged Damselflies in the grass of the orchard, where on my previous visit, five days ago, there were none. Among them I found a single male Common Blue Damselfly, which is the first time I've recorded this species at Cleeve Prior.