Unwanted Guest

I'm off work today! This means I get to do house work left over from the weekend - which isn't so great. After taking the laundry in I thought it best to try my hand at a picture while it's still dry and sunny. I blipped a few flowers in the back garden but they were just flowers. I had a go at arty wood grain on some of the logs in the log store - it never works for me. Then I thought a nice macro of the giant alliums in the front garden was in order.

I took one or two okay pictures, then decided to go after the bumblebees instead. They are nice a big and with good light and fast shutter you can freeze them - they are very busy bees! I tried a few different bees and was able to get pretty close with my macro lens - once I had a dozen or so snaps I came inside to have a look what I'd caught. About 50% went straight into the bin - they do insist on moving all over the place.... Of the rest there were two or three I liked.

The blip I picked isn't the best, but I picked it because you can clearly see the unwanted guest the poor bumblebee is carrying around. It's some kind of mite/tick, I can find lots of pictures of them with Google but I don't know which one it is. I'm sure there is someone who does know. If you believe the internet you can get rid of them by slowly lowering the bee on a twig into water and the little blighters jump off and you end up with a damp but bug free bee!

I think this is a buff-tailed bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) but I could easily be wrong - identification isn't my strong point when it comes to biology...!

You can see this picture large and others in my Google picasaweb macro album.