In article , "culprit"
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"paghat" wrote in message
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Any plant that flowers after August or in winter: cyclamens, carnelian
cherry, witchhazel, dawn viburnum, snow-crocuses, autumn crocuses,
snowdrops, hazels, winter jasmine, hellebores, winter iris, Camellia
sasanqua, several kinds of pussy willow shrubs, winter-flowering
honeysuckle, sarococca, kaffir lilies, heathers.... Most of these are
pollinated either by winter moths, or the wind.

i noticed today that my winter heather was *covered* in bees. i figure it's
because it's the only thing in bloom right now...

-kelly

Bees certainly love heathers IF they're awake when the heathers bloom,
but in temperate & colder zones the bees usually haven't woken up when the
heather is floweriest. Heather is not fussy about its pollinators, in fact
are a bit slutty about what they attract -- ants, flies, moths, beetles, &
if its too cold for any pollinators at all, they do pretty well
pollinating each other with just the wind to help. They're kind of the
equivalent of a broad-spectrum antibiotic & don't specalize in their
preferences. So if bees do wake up, they'll spot the heather.

In my garden the earliest bees are very small solitary bees & there are
rarely a great many of them in one spot until its much, much warmer than
January/February In some areas if there are prematurely warm days, then
the occasional queen bumblebee might well be seen late in March, but not a
LOT of bumblebees are after nectar around here until June. In warmer
places the bumblebees do appear in numbers earlier than that, but for us
its one lonely queen as a rare sight, until June then they're all over the
place & remain industrious into Autumn.

Some people report bees abroad even in December in places where they would
not ordinarily be through hybernating, due to global warming or El Ninyo.
But their out-of-season numbers are extremely low when this happens &
spotting just one or two in December/January would be an event.

Right now around here (Puget Sound) it's still too cold for bee activity;
I've been planting bare roots this week & tramping all over SinLur
Gardens, & not noticed even one bee, though expanses of heather are in
major bloom. If we have a warm sunny few days in a row that might spark
some limited early bee activity, & I'll be glad to see them, but even the
mason bees which appear first are not emerging in noticeable numbers until
April. In essence around here anything that blooms before April will only
rarely see even one bee, & if they do see one, it'll be one fat round
bumble queen who hasn't yet given rise to a new brood.

I love the bees & make no attempt to avoid them; I even pet them & they
don't mind. Bumblebees are my favorites, so beautiful I get heart
palpitations watching them. In the last fourty years I was only stung
once, that was a couple or three years ago when I accidentally shoveled
into a hive of bumblebees that had nested unexpectedly in some upturned
sod. Even at their maximum distress at having their nest destroyed they
were slow to get mad. If I had walked away the one that got me wouldn't
have. But I slowly knealt down to look at them more closely, thinking,
"These little guys never sting," & only then did I yelp & run indoors.

-paghat the ratgirl
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