To Bee or Not To Bee- All Hail the Flower Garden

June 1 was an exciting day.  I saw a bumblebee on one of my two rhododendron plants.  Wait, I'm wrong, but you'll have to read to the end.

Why was I so excited?

These rhodies have been in bloom for several days now and this is the first bee I've seen on it. (Flower on top right, left side of flower.  I had to retake this a couple of times.)

I've been noticing the declining populations of bees on my small urban property for years.  First, it was honeybees.  In this post from 2013, we still had a plentiful population of bumblebees.

At one time, my rhododendrons would have been swarming with bees. I first blogged about the absence in 2010.  

I would see bees visiting my crocus in the early spring.  This year, I didn't see one.  Granted, I don't keep a 24 hour watch on my flowers, but the decline is obvious.

Here, the bee is partially hidden by another flower.

This rhodie has been ailing for years.  We've been trying to nurse it along; this is the best we've seen it for a long time.  This rhodie came with the house when we bought it in the 1980's.

 Pink is the go-to color in my flower gardens.  I don't consciously do that.  It just happens.

I forget what this is, except it was supposed to be a columbine.  Its foliage looks just like a columbine's.  It blooms at about the same time (I would call it a "late columbine").  The flower looks nothing like a columbine, though, and hummingbirds ignore it.  This is the second spring it's bloomed.

I do not like this allium in my front sun yard, yet I don't get rid of it.  Its flowers hang down, and I think this may be Nectaroscordum siculum, or the Sicilian Honey Garlic. (a warning, this plant is not edible.) It's a little hard to see, photographed against some of my not-yet-ready-to-bloom day lilies.

This allium relative is supposed to be beloved by bees, but, again, not one has shown up around it.

This leads me to the hail part of the post.

We had hot weather (for May) the past few days.  On the last day of May, it got up to 92F (33.3C).  On June 1, we were in a sticky 80's and under a severe thunderstorm warning.  We are fortunate, living outside the normal tornado areas, although we've had several small ones over the years.

The storm came swiftly, with torrential rain.  When I started to hear pinging sounds, I knew we were getting hail.  Unlike when we lived in Kansas and Arkansas, hail isn't that common here (knock on wood). We heard the thunderstorm "with hail" warning minutes before and didn't have time to move our car into the garage before the sky opened up.

We weren't about to run out there in the middle of the hail to check things out.  Spouse figured he saw some the size of nickels, but the ground wasn't anywhere near covered, thankfully.  He had just done some planting.

After the rain, I went out to see if there was damage (I don't think there was but we'll see.) Our flowers were soaked and droopy, but within an hour, my other rhodie's flowers had perked up.

And, as I was taking this photo, I saw a bee buzzing around the plant.

To bee or not to bee?  A scary question.