🐝 Busy like a bumblebee!

🌻 At 13, while living in a children’s home, I took the initiative to find my first job at a garden center, working a few hours each week, becoming the youngest in my family to seek and find employment independently. At 14, I moved to Hessen to live with my father and at 15 began working as a newspaper carrier, a job I held until I was 17. By then, I had completed internships as a bank clerk, gardener, and zookeeper. I also started teaching myself web programming and image editing at 14, followed by two internships at an advertising agency. By 22, I had completed my training as an IT specialist and by 23, I was active in local politics, serving on the board of a political youth organization for three years.

🧱 Due to health issues and related prejudices, finding jobs was challenging. For example, I worked as a deputy team leader in a security archive and also took on night shifts at a conveyor belt sorting station, despite the strain on my health due to the sensory overstimulation (ADHD). I also hold a forklift license and other certifications in warehousing and logistics, and have the endurance to handle more than 20,000 packages a day.

👾 Meanwhile, I earned professional qualifications in marketing and media design and now work as a full stack web developer and designer for print and digital media.

🌿 Despite unfounded accusations of laziness or drug use, I have never had the means or social context for regular drug use. I don't even drink alcohol. I have no criminal record, and ADHD is not a psychotic illness. I enjoy nature, photographing animals and plants, and pursuing my interests. When faced with accusations, I see them as reflections of others’ deficiencies, not my own worth.

🤗 For a more nuanced discussion, please feel free to use the comments section, private messages or the anonymous contact form on my website.

🌸🐝 The fall-blooming anemone (Eriocapitella species) is already opening its flowers.

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A large earth bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) enjoys the Peace Linden tree 🌳🌼🐝

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Tasty thistle!😋 A female yellow-banded furrow bee (Halictus scabiosae) is having a good time near the Stierstädter Heide, a dry heath and nature reserve in Oberursel, where she finds open areas of ground that are ideal for creating her nesting holes.

🌼🪻 Currently, there are lots of thistles and false dandelions growing everywhere in the city, alongside many other flowering plants, that are popular food sources. It has been raining for weeks.

🐝🐝 They do not form colonies with a queen and workers, like the honey bee, but each female furrow bee has her own nesting hole with her own offspring. However, they often form clusters by building their nesting holes next to each other.

🐝🐝 The yellow-banded furrow bee is about the size of a honey bee, and a female could be mistaken for one at first glance. However, their markings are very different.

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If I were a bumblebee... 🌸🐝

This common carder bee (Bombus pascuorum), a species of bumblebee, is looking for sweet nectar, but only finds pollen in this flower, which is also tasty. The garden lupine (Lupinus polyphyllus) does not offer nectar, but has a kind of pumping mechanism in its flowers that is triggered by the bumblebee and delivers the valuable pollen. This is transported to the nest of this social species, where it mainly serves as food for the offspring. Bumblebees fly to up to 1000 flowers every day in up to 18 hours to look for food.

🐝 What would you do if you were a bumblebee?

1. Fly from flower to flower all day
2. Rest on a sunny flower and take a nap
3. Hide in a blossom and watch people
4. Something else (please explain)

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The ivy bees (Colletes hederae) are one of the 15 species of plasterer bees native to Germany.

🌿🐝🎶🌞

Their nests are lined with a cellophane-like plastic using secretions from two glands at the end of the abdomen and on the labium ("lower lip"). That's why they are also called polyester bees. In Germany we call them silk bees "Seidenbienen".

🌱🎶🐝🕳️ 🐝🕳️ 🐝🕳️🎶🌱🌞

They live solitary in colonies, in sunny locations with no or sparse vegetation, where they dig their holes. Each species of plasterer bees specializes in the pollen of a particular plant, as does the ivy bee.

🗺️🐝🌐🐝📈

The distribution area of ​​the ivy bees in Germany is concentrated in the Upper Rhine Plain and the Middle Rhine (where these photos were taken) as well as the Moselle Valley. However, since 2006 there has been a major wave of spread. The bees have also developed a novel preference for kindergarten sandboxes.

✨🐝💕

They are peaceful animals who were not disturbed at all by my presence. The females have a very weak stinger, which they only use in extreme danger. There are no known allergic reactions.

🐝🐝🐝

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Another blink of the sloth's eye
and the flowers bloom again.

🦋 Lasiommata megera, the "wall"
🐝 Bombus hortorum, the "garden bumblebee"
🏰 at the Falkenstein Castle
🌞 last summer

🌸💮🌺🌻🌼🌲🌳

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Watch it to the end, not only I was curious! 😊🐝
They are so lovely! 🥰

Bees, once they find a good nectar source, tend to stick with this type of flower. That's why the beekeeper can tell you which plants the honey comes from.

🌸💮🌺🌻🌼🌲🌳

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Great banded furrow bee (male)
Halictus scabiosae

(20.06.2020 in Oberursel, Germany)

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🐝 Bee wild and sweet! 🐝

Who can help me with the species? I thought of a male Halictus scabiosae (20.06.2020 in Oberursel, Germany).

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