First bumble, home

The bumblebees have been late this year and given all the bee-related calamities that have been in the news the past few years, I was beginning to get more than a little concerned about their absence. I'd actually seen one "bumble" about a week ago, but it was a brief sighting, and it hadn't triggered a spate of bumblebee appearances in my flower gardens, where the blooms were now regularly being visited by honeybees and flower flies. But this afternoon, when the semi-wild species tulips we raise opened their petals, the bumblebees could resist the call no longer. I heard a familiar buzz and watched a fat queen bee—only the fall-fertilized queens hibernate underground and arise in March to begin the cycle anew—visit tulip after tulip, sipping nectar and gathering pollen. It's clearly time for the bumblebees to get out of the subterranean sack and come back to work.