Yesterday was a rainy day, with more than a one or two millimeter tease of precipitation. I am relieved that the gardens I help maintain will get a good drink. I was quite miserable yesterday, picking flowers in the rain for my son's grade seven grad with a splitting headache. Rain like this means honeybees have to stay inside. It was even too wet for bumble bees-- I saw one hunkering down under my lovage umbrels/umbrellas.
Too much rain will mean a dearth of pollen and nectar for honeybees, so they depend on a certain percentage of warm sunny days. If a summer honeybee only lives six weeks, one week of rain is a large percentage of their life. I would think that inside the hive, their lives would be busy, but not as risky or taxing as foraging. In this photo, you can see a honeybee foraging in the ground-cover type of campanula. She doesn't appear to be getting much pollen, but her abdomen looks distended with nectar.
Please check out Bug Girl's Pollinator Week post. She has some good reading recommendations and links to free downloads and e-books.
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