Interesting stuff. Bumblebees are everywhere here at the moment. They’re yet another introduced species which shouldn’t be in our environment, but as far as they go I quite like them. Much better than the various wasps we also have inflicted on us from overseas travellers of olde, not to mention the rabbits, stoats, weasals, ragwort, possums, wallabies, etc. The bumblebees are really quite docile and cute and do a good job in the garden. I was stung by one once though and by geeze it hurt.

Good to hear you still have proper Pounds. Not sure why the UK girl in the NZ news report gave the money in Euros, probably because it sounded higher. Maybe she thought we can’t understand Pounds as it’s so old fashioned and Imperialistic. Who knows.

I heard of another much more bizarre species re-introduction recently where greenies of some sort in Australia have been releasing native rats they found on islands into the streets of Sydney from where they’d been irradicated. not that is flipping stupid.