Tonight will be a quick post as I have had a long day of travel back from my parents’ Golden Anniversary celebration.

As we were leaving my parents’ house this morning we were taking a few pictures of me with my parents in front of one of my Dad’s rose bushes. Intertwined with the rose bush was a nice morning glory vine.

OK, I will get to the morning glory blossoms, but first we have a nice big metal bumblebee in my Dad’s flower garden. Maybe it is what attracts the little ones 🙂

Here we have a little bumblebee collecting nectar and pollen from a morning glory blossom. There are over 1,000 species of flowers known as morning glories. They are in the family Convolvulacaea, but are spread across different tribes or genera. This one is most likely in the Ipomoea tribe.

Here we have a closer view of the bumblebee at work. The bumblebee is in the genus Bombus and there are over 250 species or sub-species. I am not going to attempt to classify this one tonight.

Here we have a view of the bumblebee from the top. The wings are folded up and you can see the very distinctive black and yellow pattern on the body.

In this last picture you can see the bee’s proboscis as it collects nectar from the blossom.

After collecting nectar and pollen the bumblebee will take it back to the colony to feed the young bees. Bumblebees do not store up mass quantities of food like honey bees, so are susceptible to food shortages.

I hope you enjoyed these pictures. They are definitely interesting little insects.

Steven