Yellow-Faced Bumble bees LOVE poppies

As I've noted in earlier posts, I had never seen so many yellow-faced bumble bees Bombus vosnesenskii before we moved to our home here higher in the East Bay hills. They are the first bees I see in the native plant garden in the morning, and also the last.

In the above image a yellow-faced bumble bee is gathering pollen in an Eschscholzia lobbii, commonly known as Frying pan poppy.

It was a fairly windy afternoon, but this bee was determined to get its pollen from these lovely little bright yellow blossoms. The bee had to fly against the wind direction, to somehow grab hold of petals.

This photo was taken when the wind died down.

And here you see the bee from above, lying sideways in the poppy, gathering nectar.

After gathering nectar from the frying pan poppies, the yellow-faced bumble bee headed for one of the California poppy patches.

I planted these poppy patches from seed, and it is so gratifying to observe the bees visiting all day long.

It's much easier to photograph these bees because they are larger and slower than the honey bees, wool carder bees and digger bees that also visit the native plant garden.

And here is another image of the same yellow-faced bumble bee in a California poppy, seen from above, its face toward the right.