Around the Cape

It's not just honey bees that forage among the cape mallows in the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility at the University of California, Davis.

The brilliant magenta flowers also draw assorted other insects.

Such as flies...hover flies.

Last weekend, before the rains hit, we spotted a lone hover fly, aka flower fly, visiting the cape mallow.

The cape mallow (Anisodontea hypomadarum), a native of South Africa, is not an earlier bloomer or a late bloomer--it's a year-around bloomer. It's an evergreen shrub that holds its own.

And honey bees, carpenter bees, bumble bees, sweat bees, hover flies, butterflies, praying mantids and assorted other insects...