This has been a bad year for bees and butterflies as far as I can tell from my wanderings in Hertfordshire. The ubiquitous Garden Bumblebee and the widespread Meadow Brown seem to be the only species holding up reasonably well. I'm starting to see more bees on the wing e.g. Common Carder as seen above. Also a few other butterfly species - Comma, Marbled White, Red Admiral etc. but not in numbers, just the occasional sighting.

 Presumably the wet winter and the cool, damp spring into summer has hammered them. Ironically it's been a year of rampant growth for wildflowers and garden plants so the food sources are there; less so the pollinators to forage on them.