Great Yellow Bumblebee Painting

My latest painting is a small work, 3" x 4", painted in the miniature style featuring two Great Yellow Bumblebees. It was a special commission and the bees needed to be larger than life size. These bumblebees used to be found throughout the UK but are now very rare, only surviving in the far north of Scotland and the Northern and Western Isle Isles. We are lucky to still have them here in Orkney and I've been able to get some decent photos of them in the garden over the years, and for this painting they had to be shown on a bunch of Kidney Vetch (or woundwort) and Sea Plantain.

We only get a few species of bumblebee here in Orkney, but I can never remember what they all are and get hopelessly mixed up, but even so I still love taking photos of them in the summer - then trying to identify them (or more usually asking Tim Dean, who did the Orkney Book of Birds with me and is a walking encyclopedia). Then of course I forget again....! (Nov 2015)