We're in zone 6a, but just barely. Most of our flowers stopped blooming a while ago and we've had a few hard frosts. Both the blooms and the bees were a nice surprise.

I saw this little cutie inside my squash flowers.

A golden northern bumblebee crawling in one of my favorites, the fringed-gentian.

I may or may not look like this after eating a bowl of popcorn by myself

I was surprised the lemongrass overwintered. The flowers were a second nice surprise. And then like all flowers in our veg garden it turned out that bees really like them.

Not the best angle, but the fam would not tolerate my shenanigans for long

Look at those gams!

My butternut squash plant has escaped the garden and is slowly consuming the deck butt I'm okay with that since I'm always finding bees in the comically large flowers

This bush is usually crawling in bees for a month or so while it blooms.

Its bloom cycle might have been a bit shorter than usual due to the drought, but the bees were happy while it lasted. They're off to the rose of sharron, which is one of a few plants exerting the energy to bloom right now.

～(つˆ0ˆ)つ｡☆

A congregation of bees in one of our squash flowers 🥰

Crossposted from https://lemmy.world/post/50790909

From the OC:

Taken pretty recently. I was mostly focused on the bees, but happily got a dream-like background.

Bumblebees and honeybees alike go gaga for artichoke flowers. They really have to dig in there to get to the nectar, but given how many other wildflowers are currently blooming in my yard right now that don't require spelunking that the bees could be feeding from instead, the artichokes must be producing some really premium nectar to be worth the extra trouble!

Side view:

Great Lakes region, USA. June 2026.

Southern Wisconsin

Southern Wisconsin

Great Lakes region, USA. June 2026.