Every prairie restoration goes through a "Penstemon digitalis phase," I am told--a time when Foxglove Penstemon seems predominant. Our Creek Field is coming down off that phase, but there is still plenty of Foxglove blooming heartily. This year the flowers were covered by diminutive bumble bees--a kind I had never seen before, or at least never noticed. It was so hard to get a still photo, as the small bees were either deep inside the tubular flowers or moving hectically from flower to flower. Finally, I had enough photos to submit to bugguide.net and got an ID: Bombus bimaculatus, Two-spotted Bumble Bee. Apparently, the identifying field-characteristics are small size, long face, and the second abdominal segment, where the yellow hairs stop before reaching the sides, leaving two black "corners." I include freeze-frames in the following video showing one of the corners.
B. bimaculatus has an unusually long tongue, especially designed for tubular flowers such as those of Foxglove Penstemon.
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