Bumblebee watching

I am doing 30 Days Wild with the Wildlife Trusts. My vague plan is to have an invertebrate emphasis, to make an effort to see more of them given the dismal, windy, cool spring we are having, and to revive the almost dormant blog. Bumblebees appear to be having a particularly bad year. The first workers have been few and small, and even if many of their favourite plants are blooming, I only see the single worker about every now and then. I decided bumblebee watching would be the first wild event of 30 Days Wild. After all, Bumblebees fly during cold, cloudy days.
 Over the years, I have introduced plenty of native plants in the garden, which attract an assortment of solitary bees, bumblebees and other insects. Primroses flower early in the spring and are visited by the Hairy Footed flower bee, Anthophora plumipes, and occasionally by Bee Flies. Later,  Welsh Poppies buzz with bumblebees collecting pollen. At this time of the year Hedge Woundwort (above, a bee's eye view of a flower spike) and White Dead-Nettles are in bloom, and they are followed by long-tongued solitary bees and bumblebees.
This afternoon I managed to see just two bumblebee species, the Carder Bee, Bombus pascuorum and the Early Bumblebee, Bombus pratorum. B. pascuorum is a long tongued bumblebee and likes flowers from the mint family. It visited sage and hedge woundwort, while B. pratorum has a very small tongue and likes flat flowers. It visited Alliums and White dead-nettles. I find that B. pratorum, despite its tiny tongue, sometimes steals nectar through holes at the base of flowers, or is small enough to get inside the flower and reach the nectar.

This Bombus pratorum was visiting White Dead Nettles in the front garden.

A Bombus pascuorum on the sage hedge.