Went to Google—what did we do in the old days?— & typed in "bumble bees australia". Discovered there are bumble bees here, but only in Tasmania, where they were introduced, as in New Zealand, because of their excellent pollen transfer skills. Mainland Australia, however, is on a bumble bee watch, Hiveland Security at work, because those aforementioned abilities do not discrimate between commercial crops & noxious weeds.
But Google had photos of similar bees; & the bee—I've only ever seen one at a time & I've no way of knowing if they are the same individual—doing the rounds of the garden is called a Teddy Bear bee. Groan, but I have to do it—what a buzz!
So, if you go down in the woods today......
(photo from the Australian Native Bee Research Centre website)
1 comment:
Late fall i will often see a dozen of these buzzing about my late season blooms. They are fun to walk among and you can easily reach out and touch their furry backs; they are so intent on gathering the pollen...perhaps they are high on it and that explains the wobbly flight patterns.
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