Honey Bee feeding on Compass Plant

With the drought there aren’t many sources of nectar for bees and butterflies right now. This morning the only plants I saw bees feeding on were Compass Plants and Ashy Sunflowers.Thistles are also blooming but I didn’t see anything feeding on them. Typically they are one of the most reliable summer plants for finding butterflies. I wonder if the Thistles aren’t producing nectar even though they are flowering? I wonder if they will successfully produce fertile seed if the flowers aren’t pollinated?

Most of the bees I saw this morning were the exotic Honey Bee (apis mellifera). Honey Bees are Old World insects and not native to North America. When we first moved to this property in 1970 I kept a couple of bee hives to get honey. Their biology is fascinating, but since I’ve learned that they are exotic my enthusiasm has faded.