Common Carder-bee ( Bombus pascuorum

A busy day continuing the tidying job which KKK nagged encouraged me to get on with.   She was right it was long overdue.   However that greatly reduced the blipping opportunities.

So in a break in working I wandered round the garden taking shots of various flowers.   As I passed the Berberis I could heard a bee working, so I searched for it.  When I found it it was as far as my knowledge of bees goes a Common Carder-bee.  Like all bees it wasn't prepared to pose nicely so I had to follow it for a while.

I have it down as a Common Carder as these are the only Carder bees over most of the UK.  It is a social bee like most bumble bees and nests in all sorts of odd places including birds nests and moss on lawns.  There are about 200 workers when a nest is fully developed.  Like most (all?)Bumble Bees the workers die as winter approaches leaving a hibernating Queen.  The queens are early fliers being active in early spring and the species g=hs been seen flying as late as November.