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Tuesday, December 24, 2013

A Bombus Christmas surprise!

My elderly neighbour rang, all a'fluster - she'd gone down to her garden shed to get the box her Christmas tree and decorations were stored in, bought it up to the house and opened it only to discover it had become home to a nest of bumble bees! I was summonsed to rescue Christmas and donned my bee-suit in a trice. There was the most decorative and festive nest of bees I'd ever seen and I negotiated on behalf of the bees to keep some of the decorations so that they could enjoy a glittery and largely undisturbed Christmas themselves. Now they are living, a little grumpily I suspect, in a new box at my place and I've done my first Christmas Act of Goodwill, so am feeling pretty happy. So's my neighbour who's busy trimming her tree with the help of her grandchildren, all un-stung.

Old nest

New nest

Old home

New home

The change-over with Christmas angel

2 comments:

fredinthegrass said...

Rg, you do make the cutest of Christmas Angels!!
We must have had a 'hatching' of bumbles recently - or we have discovered a dwarf variety. They are happily making their way into the raspberry house while their larger/parental bees have to wait till the door is ajar for the netting is too small for them to penetrate.

robertguyton said...

Fred - these one's were tiny also. I'm not sure whether they're newly hatched or pygmy. Time will tell. I opened the box today and they buzzed their annoyance from the middle of their tinsely cluster but didn't venture out - it's cold here.