Time for Bees

 Today I was sitting outside in the arbor between noon and one o'clock, and I happened to notice that they aster patch next to the arbor was well populated with bumblebees. I was surprised to see them, because I have seen very few bumblebees lately. Part of that is because most of the flowers in my backyard have past their bloom; the goldenrod has almost completely gone to seed, and most of the asters have faded, too. This particular patch of asters still has a lot of blooms, but I have checked it on my bug walk every day and not seen any insects there at all. It occurred to me, though, that I tend to do my bug walk later in the day than it happened to be as I saw this, and most of the backyard, including that patch of flowers, is in the shade at that time. In fact, in the summer, that patch is in the shade most of the time. But this time of year,  and earlier in the day, there is obviously a lot of sun there, particularly as now many of the trees have lost their leaves. I have noticed before that I am more likely to find bees, including bumblebees, in sunny spots. It was a very pleasant surprised to see all of the bumblebees there today. I decided to take the opportunity to do an earlier bug walk just to make sure I was out there while the bees were still there.

Of course, seeing bees, and getting them to pose for pictures are not the same thing.

Once I was actually looking at the flowers from close by, instead of from a distance in the arbor, I saw that it wasn't just bumblebees that were there:

A couple of sweat bees

After having two Backyard Bugs of the Day yesterday, today I don't have any.

I have talked a lot, and I mean A LOT this year about how few bugs I have seen, with lower numbers of some species, and other species not showing up at all, but one species seems to be having a banner year:

Suddenly there are case moth caterpillars everywhere. Well, all over the goldenrod, anyway. I have never seen so many of them.

It's a hard thing to photograph; the caterpillars are tiny, and dangling from the plants on their silk threads. The threads were all over the area where the plants were, and I kept walking into them. I felt like I must be covered in caterpillars, which was not a pleasant thought, so I told myself that I was being silly, and didn't have any caterpillars on me. I believed it until I found two of them crawling on my sleeve. I would have taken a picture of them, but it's hard to photograph your own upper arm. I had a hard time getting them off, too–they did not want to let go.

Large milkweed bugs

The pretty leaf beetle has returned:

Ailanthus webworm caterpillar

Weevil

There were a lot more fungus beetles on the bracket fungus today:

Arachnid Appreciation:

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What is this doing in Arachnid Appreciation, you may be wondering? A bad picture of a bee on an aster? Well, as I was taking pictures of the bee (none of which were good), I noticed the photobomber.

Tiny jumping spider