Bee - utiful

I think I spend the most time in the garden staring into the ponds at the moment. 

I like to see all the colour variations on the multitudes of young fish that have been born in there and I spend a lot of time observing the bees.

They intrigue me, I have seen a bee misjudge the depth of a lily pad and land in the water, swim over to the nearest plant climb up it wait a few seconds and fly away again.

They come to the pond to drink, occasionally I see them in the pond flowers but more often using the water, they will often land on a damaged lily pad and drink through the holes as in the image above.

They often land in the protruding plants and climb down lower to drink the water gathered between it leaves, the bee above is drinking from the protruding plant.

I see bees of different body colours and patterns and the occasional European wasp.

I sometimes observe them to be doing something that looks like washing their legs. 

 They don't usually bother each other but today a saw one intentionally trying to bug every other bee on the one lily pad, nudging them and trying get under them ( it seemed ) they didn't like it. He moved away and it seemed he was having trouble getting a drink.

We see the most activity late in the afternoon when there is so much bee activity with them coming and going. Most of this behaviour is all a mystery to me but intrigues me nonetheless.

I love that we cater to them not just with fruit and flowers but as a watering spot too.

I never really thought about Bee's drinking before I was a pond owner.