Another bumblebee! I do love them. It's funny - if a bee comes up to me while I'm sitting eating or reading or whatever, I tend to run away from them for fear of being stung, but I'm quite happy to get really close to take pictures when they're in amongst the flowers. I feel much more comfortable about them then - I know they're a lot more interested in the flowers than in me.
I wanted to identify this bee for the blog, but sadly I have been thwarted. I think I can say with reasonable confidence that it is either a bombus terrestris (buff-tailed bumblebee) or a bombus lucorum (white-tailed bumblebee), but alas it turns out that the workers of these two species are virtually indistinguishable except through dissection. Damn it! Better start carrying a scalpel as well as a camera...
For my sister's birthday, I bought her a bumblebee bracelet from Swarovski. She was debating what name to call it, and settled on Albus - like Albus Dumbledore, dumbledore being an archaic dialectical word for a bumblebee. Rather a cunning name, I thought! Apparently, the word bumblebee was preceeded by the phrase "humble bee" which Wikipedia tells me was first used in 1450 in Fysshynge wyth Angle, "In Juyll the greshop & the humbylbee in the medow." I rather like it.
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