Tongue twisters

A bee’s tongue determines the flowers it visits, says Val

- Val Bourne

AS the year wears on it gets harder to identify the bees in the garden. I seem to see a lot of larger bees with tapering abdomens, but I’m unsure whether they’re queen bumblebees or cuckoo bees. The smaller workers all seem to look the same, too. However, looking at the flowers they’re visiting helps, because some bees have shorter tongues than others so they tend to visit flowers with simpler shapes.

At the moment we have lots of honey bees feeding on annual borage (Borago officinalis), which germinated after the summer rains. This coarse-leaved annual has blue starry flowers and these are often floated in drinks, although anything acidic, like a slice of lemon, turns the cornflower-blue flowers pink. Members of the borage family are all nectar-rich and their flowers have the ability to replenish nectar quickly. Comfrey, pulmonaria, brunnera, forget-me-not and echium are also good bee plants.

Honey-bee tongues measure (6.6mm) in length, which is roughly 1 ⁄4in, although they can extend their tongues to 7mm in order to access the smaller late-season flowers of red clover. Early red clover flowers are larger in size and only accessible to bumblebees – an observation made by Charles Darwin in the 19th century.