Bee experts, perhaps you could help me understand two bee behaviors in my garden that don't make a great deal of sense to me:
1) Two of the six apples on my young Gala apple tree are being hollowed out by bees. Although I realize their pollen sources are greatly diminishing this late in the season, what would they want with my ripening apples? It was my understanding that bees (adult and young) ate the honey they produce with the pollen they collected over the season. Do they also eat fruits, too? Will they harm my other apples, or were these apples already rotting away and that's what attracted them?...
2) The bees--the same variety that are in my apples, as far as I can tell--are swarming around my (non-blooming) thistle that is annoyingly popping up all over my garden. If it's not blooms attracting them to the thistle, what is? It's very obvious that it's the thistle, in particular, attracting them because they aren't attracted to the other plants in my garden (aside from the apples).
