I could have written this post about just about any living thing, but I’m predisposed to notice and care about bumble bees, which I studied during my MSc in Ontario and Colorado. This spring, worried about the lack of bumble bees in my area, I contacted a former lab-mate, now a professor at York University, about what I could do to help pollinators beyond making my garden more hospitable. By coincidence, she had just posted these recommendations on Twitter, and drew my attention in particular to participating in the Citizen Science project Bumble Bee Watch. The data such projects provide to conservation biologists is invaluable, I’m told; and I’ve found it strangely addictive to generate such data for them.

It’s become a bit of an obsession, actually. I now walk around with a camera and exasperate my family by stopping everywhere to take multiple photos of bumble bees. Some are reproduced here, all the photos above and below having been taken since July 2021, across Ontario and Quebec (for IDs and locations, look up my name on Bumble Bee Watch). I also have bumble bee photos dating back to 2002, from my field work and my subsequent ability to care about and notice bumble bees, the many species that coexist and differ subtly in colour pattern and behaviour, and the plants they visit. Bumble bees strike me as the most personable and psychologically interesting of insects, but maybe that’s just because I’ve paid attention to them.

It’s a particular thrill, when something that was just generalized (“bees” or even “bugs”) becomes particularized (“bumble bees” or even “Bombus impatiens,” and beyond that “Bombus impatiens male, or worker, or queen”). I can imagine a Borges short story, in which a character develops the ability to see everything in its absolute particularity. No doubt that would be a curse, and a problem for science. But seeing species only generically–such as my friend who can’t differentiate roses from daffodils, seeing them both simply as “flowers”–is also a curse, both for the beholder and for their community.

I remember playing in the lawn in the backyard when I was about 7 years old, and noticing, quite suddenly, that what had seemed like a uniform carpet of self-same grass was in fact a patchwork of many greens–not just grass, but moss, creeping plants (Creeping Charlie?), and other plants with tiny leaves and flowers.

I have been ruthless in removing non-native plants from my garden, even those I planted myself in past years. There are some exceptions, though. Some of these non-natives either flower when little else is there to feed pollinators (forget-me-not, Forsythia), while others are so obviously valued by bees and butterflies that they clearly perform an important role in maintaining and feeding insects. Comfrey (Symphytum asperum) is one of these, an attractive (though prickly) plant whose hanging bell-shaped flowers are favoured by bumble bees (who use “buzzing” to get at its pollen). A bunch of comfrey flowers are in the picture at top left, below. Another non-native I foster is fennel, which I don’t cook with but plant because it seems to be the favourite food plant for swallowtail butterfly caterpillars (they also like Queen Ann’s Lace, but they ignore that if there’s fennel around). Thyme and other minty herbs (oregano, basil, mint) have small flowers that small bees and flies like.

But my favourite, and the biggest draw for bees in my garden, is sage. It flowers in late May and over continues to do so for weeks. Bees of all sizes come for the nectar, and looking down at my big sage plants yesterday I could see the busy traffic of dozens of bees. These include honey bees (Apis mellifera), like the one seen taking off after feeding at a sage flower, top right; Osmia sp., second down from top left; Common Eastern Bumble Bee (Bombus impatiens), second down from top right, using its front leg to hold up a leaf; Bicoloured Agapostemon (Agapostemon viriscens), third down on the left, seen here approaching a sage flower on the wing; the Polyester Bee (Colletes inaequalis), third down from the right; and several others too small for me to recognize. There are also ants feeding on sage nectar and several species of fly, as well as Cabbage White butterflies (Pieris rapae), bottom left. The surfeit of insects also attracts parasitic wasps, one of which I captured in a fuzzy image (bottom right).

Apart from sage, this week’s major draw for bees was my honey locust tree (Gleditsia triacanthos), which I planted in 2009 as a seedling and which is now taller than the house. It’s the first year that it’s produced a lot of flowers, and the bees are all over it. They also love the Red-Osier Dogwood (Cornus sericea), which is going through a second round of flowering. As the honey locust stops flowering, the staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina) is about to flower; I never imagined that these interesting-looking inflorescences (a bit like Romanesco brocoli) could be appealing to insects, just because they’re green and not showy–but I was wrong. Bees love them:

After years of canoe-tripping in northern Ontario and Quebec, I have come to find the flora and fauna of boreal regions impressive in ways that nature documentaries tend to reserve for tropical rainforests and coral reefs. There are obviously major differences, not just in biodiversity but also in vividness. But the colour palettes of the north are pleasing in their own ways, and these ways are not only subtle. The photos below, from a road trip in 2019 starting near Sudbury then heading into the mountains north of the St Laurence and west of the Saguenay and then east to the Gaspe peninsula, give a glimpse of this beauty and variety.

From top left: a Gray Tree Frog (Dryophytes versicolor) on a willow leaf; a katydid by the roadside; a monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) in a Joe Pye-weed (Eupatorium maculatum) inflorescence; a fly on an aster flower; the landscape about 45 minutes north-east of Quebec City; fire-weed on the roadside; Sheep Laurel (Kalmia angustifolia); a gentian (likely a Closed Bottle Gentian, Gentiana andrewsii); Joe Pye-weed by a slow-moving river; a porcupine (Erethizon dorsatum); unidentified caterpillar on Mountain Maple; the maritime forest; a meadow vole (Microtus pennsylvanicus). All photos (C) D. A. Newman.