Honeybee on catmint
Apis mellifera
Honeybee · Brooklyn Botanic Garden · 17 June 2026
A honeybee on catmint in the June border, one of dozens working the same plant. Nepeta is one of the most reliably bee-covered plants in any garden that grows it, and a stand in flower is audible from the path.
The banded, golden-brown abdomen and slender build separate a honeybee from the stockier bumblebees on the same borders. Catmint flowers in long, loose whorls up the stem rather than one tight spike, which lets several bees work a single plant without getting in each other's way. The cats are after the leaves, not the flowers; the bees are the other way round.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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