THE SPIDER AND THE BUMBLEBEE

I really do have to toughen up if I am going to continue taking photographs of spiders in my garden.  While nipping off the dead heads of a trailing fuchsia in a hanging basket today I accidentally came across a crime scene.  I call it a crime scene because a female Araneus diadematus has captured a bumblebee and wound her silky thread around it.  I can only hope that the bee was dead.  I didn't know what it was at the time of taking the photos.   If I had arrived on the scene earlier, I would have intercepted and saved the bee.  I've got a great fondest for the fluffy little buzzers.  On the other hand, I find spiders both fascinating and disgusting; horrific, actually, and I was so upset when I transferred the photographs to my computer, where I could see them more clearly, and realised it was a bumblebee.  I felt like going out and squashing the spider and saying 'how do you like it?'   But, of course, I didn't.  I would never make a wild-life photographer, would I?





Araneus diadematus and a bumblebee

Araneus diadematus and a bumblebee