And it turns out we DID have potatoes!

These really were planted, I remember now. They seem to have simultaneously spread quite a bit while not reproducing all that much, that or there's lots of potatoes I've yet to uncover. How deep do you generally have to dig to get them all, anyway?

Turns out they were less "near" the bees than "on" the bees. Oh, joy. It was "dig up a potato, toss some dirt on the bee!" for a while there. Luckily these were very sleepy bumblebees, not yellow jackets. I'm really not looking forward to offing the hive.