There were a dozen bumblees on our Raspberry Rugostar this morning--just counting those around the flowers I could see! Some of the flowers had two or three bumblees buzzing in them at the same time.

This is a sharp contrast to our first year of gardening, in which we sprayed combo fungicide/insecticide on our roses and wiped out the bees. Currently, we spray fungicides for BS control and use granular Imidcloprid/Cyfluthrin to control midge. I saw an adult praying mantis on of our rose bushes two days ago.

At times, the thrips damage has been annoying this year, but we still had enough blooms to do well in the rose show, so we may continue to do nothing about them...unless the damage gets significantly worse.