To bumblebee or not to bumblebee, hmmmm? Just can't help myself when I'm sitting with the flowers to follow these guys from flower to flower and watch them hard at work. So, I'll go ahead and bumblebee and hope folks don't tire of seeing images of these wonders of nature.

A Snowberry Clearwing moth enjoying itself at the Milkweed buffet in early July. This sphinx moth is often mistaken for a bumblebee because of its color pattern . . .

Pollen Sacs. What in the heck? Last summer as various types of bees began visiting the flowers, some of the captures showed a few of the bees with these yellow things on their legs - both honey bees and bumblebees had them. Not being a guru on bees, the research began . . .

Back in September the bumblebees had become quite active around the flowers, and I was watching this one in particular as it collected some pollen from this finch-plucked flower, and then it crawled out onto these two petals and it stopped moving . . . for about 8 to 10 minutes. Then it started its wing machine . . .

Check out this bumblebee from last August as it was flying in for a sunflower. The pollen is sticking to the bumblebee everywhere, perhaps at capacity since you can see some of it falling off behind it. Fascinating little creatures they are.

With the summer colors gone and most of the autumn colors, been looking back to late summer images and found a clearwing hummingbird moth in flight that makes me smile. Didn't have many visit this year, and this was the only one I was able to capture in flight. Love these little flying beasts.