I’m back from my mom’s condominium, where the excessively manicured sprayed and poisoned landscapes are barren of bees and butterflies. So glad to be in my garden where the wild things are. Here is a great big bumblebee busy at work in our front yard.
My lino print with collaged Japanese washi papers on a white mulberry leaf paper with bark inclusions shows blossoming cherry branches & two of our wild, native bees: the bumblebee (Bombus impatiens) and the Blue Orchard Mason Bee (Osmia lignaria). I printed it by hand on Japanese kozo (or mulberry paper), 16” x 20” with various collaged Japanese washi papers for the blossoms, bee bodies and wings.🧵
@Dhmspector@ai6yr "Meanwhile, the American bumblebee, once the most commonly observed bumblebee in the U.S., has suffered an 89% drop in abundance and vanished from at least eight states over the past two decades, according to a 2021 petitionfiled by the Center for Biological Diversity and a group of Albany Law School students arguing that the American bumblebee should be listed as an endangered species." Bumblebees still in Wisconsin for now. #bumblebee#bumblebees
Bumblebees will nest in any suitable sized cavity, so I’m going use #InsertAnInvert2024 prompt “around logs” as my cue to talk about the rusty-patched bumble bee (Bombus affinis). The rusty-patched bumble is a pollinator native to North America and was common here in Ontario as recently as the 1980s. It is now sadly on the brink of extinction, 🧵1/n