A much sunnier, calmer day today and the bees are out and about – didn’t spot many in the garden except in the forget-me-nots around the hive.

Bee on the forget-me-nots

Took some pictures quite close to the hive and the bees took absolutely no notice of me. Here they are coming in to land:

Flying in 24 may 2011

You can see three different colours of pollen in the photo below – almost white on the legs of the bee just going into the entrance, bright yellow on the bee bottom left and dark orange on the one on the right. I tried to check these against the Pollen Identifier tool on the Bristol Beekeepers Association website but not really sure – the whitish may be honeysuckle, the orange Yew, the bright yellow could be oil seed rape (is this still flowering?) But as we live right in the centre of town I didn’t think they’d make it out as far as any farmland for the OSR but perhaps they already have.

Three different colours of pollen