Sunflowers are my favorite flowers🌻 Honey bees and meadow bugs also love them 😊

The common meadow bug (Lygus pratensis) is a mirid bug. In January I introduced you to the mirid bug Deraeocoris ruber. Both wear a striking triangle on their backs. A major difference is that the meadow bug only sucks on plants.💚🥤

It is native to almost the entire northern hemisphere and is very common. Because they are attracted to light, they are often found around lamps or when they stray into your home.

Help them out again! It's important to be good to animals. And it goes down well with other people too. Yesterday I was walking to the grocery store and an aphid landed in my eye. A woman approaching me saw how I carefully placed the animal in a hedge and was totally impressed.🥰 Damn! Now I've revealed the aphid trick! 😜

Box tree moth,
Cydalima perspectalis

Native to Asia, it has been invading Europe since the 2000s and increasingly the United States in recent years. It has no natural enemies in Europe and has already contributed to the loss of entire forest areas. The caterpillars are poisonous. In its homeland in Asia, the Asian hornet is a natural predator. Although the Asian hornet is also spreading more and more in Europe, this is also a problem, because the Asian hornet also hunts bees and the European bees are not as defensive as the Asian bees.

The appearance and disappearance of individual species can have far-reaching consequences not only for wildlife but also for human livelihoods.

This little beauty is a mirid bug (Deraeocoris ruber)🤠🐞

They inhabit forests, but occur mainly on sunny forest edges and open areas.🌳🌞

Mirid bugs prey on various small arthropods such as caterpillars, but particularly aphids.🌿🐛
The prey is killed and sucked out by a sting that is also painful for humans.🧃😋

But that rarely happens.😄

The species is useful and harmless.🤗 However, nature is full of phenomena. In Germany, 2016, a related species (Psallus varians) - within the same family (Miridae) - spontaneously developed an increased appetite for blood and attacked humans and animals in very large numbers.😵🩸🌳

The mirid bug is widespread in almost all of Europe (except the far north and few islands in the Mediterranean and Atlantic) - you find it in North Africa - and further east to the Caucasus. It has been introduced in some areas of North and South America.🌍🌎

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

🌸💮🌺🌻🌼🌲🌳

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.

🌸💮🌺🌻🌼🌲🌳

🐝🌸🌦️

It's raining and the teasel flowers are filled with delicious potion.
Bumblebees use their magic sparingly and do not fly when it's raining. Happy are those who find refuge on this wild teasel (Dipsacus fullonum). Here you can linger until the sun shines again. Perfect stay for this buff-tailed bumblebee (Bombus terrestris).

European garden spider,
Araneus diadematus
(09/2016 in Oberursel, Germany)

It's raining... My guest forgot her umbrella and looked for shelter. Now she's totally relaxed getting dry on my warm hand! 😆💛

Common yellowjacket
(Vespula vulgaris)

Small tortoiseshell (Aglais urticae) enjoying the sun 🦋🌞

Normally they always fly away 😆

Desert locusts (Shistocerca gregaria) only do two things 🤷‍♂️

I feed them alive to my animals.
I have also tried freeze-dried grasshoppers myself. Tasted a little like sunflower seeds. Did you ever eat insects and did you like it? 😋