Bombus Terrestris

I was saying yesterday that we had watched a Cumbria Wildlife Trust webinar on Bumble Bee Identification and Recording,  part of a Get Cumbria Buzzing campaign.

As its name suggests, Bombus terrestris is a ground nester in large colonies of up to 600 bees, often using old mammal nests. What I've been learning is that this is a female as it has pollen baskets for taking pollen back to the nest. What you can't see on this shot is that it has a short tongue therefore prefers open daisy-type flowers.

We're sending photos and reports to iNaturalist for their recordings.

Anyhow, it's Saturday and this was taken at the lodge while we're doing our cleaning duties. In spite of us thinking things looked awful last weekend with no cushions, laid table or non-essential ornamentation, the visitors left us the most wonderful comment in the Visitors' Book. They know our place well and said how fantastic it was to be back here again after the lockdown. (They had to have a previous booking re-allocated.)

That spurred us on with the cleaning this weekend!