Red-tailed Bumblebee

Whilst we were in the garden Victoria spotted this Red-tailed Bumblebee, Bombus lapidaries, which is covered in mites. This one is very heavily infested with the mites and it kept trying to scratch them off its sides, using first one leg and then another. Victoria would have liked to cure it and there are ways on the Internet to do this although they are time consuming. Some mites just make the bee heavier, which makes it difficult for it to fly, others are blood suckers and they kill the bees. This bee disappeared so it either flew back into its nest or died somewhere. I suspect that the rest of the bumblebees in the nest, which is in one of our borders are also heavily infected.

A day of sorting out and moving things about. It was rather a hot day for doing this, muggy and heavy, rather than sunshine.