Year after year, this tree has produced great bee photos foraging on winter-flowering cherry tree. The time was 2 PM, the temperature was 57°F (13.9°C), blue sky, sunshine, and a loud buzz of bees on this quiet street.
What's next? Crabapple trees (thanks to Trees Atlanta) are beginning to leaf-out and those flowers will be here soon and attracting honey bees too.
| 1st Windfall | day of year |
|---|---|
| April 10, 2011 | 100 |
| March 27, 2012 | 87 |
| April 19, 2013 | 109 |
| April 12, 2015 | 102 |
| April 15, 2017 | 105 |
| April 5, 2018 | 95 |
| April 11, 2019 | 101 |
| April 7, 2021 | 97 |
| April 6, 2022 | 96 |
| median | 100 |
I found this year's first Tulip Popular flower windfall on April 6, 2022 (96th day of the year) and in a few days afterward the ground was covered with Tulip Popular flowers and bees returned with cream colored pollen. April 6 is just a few days earlier than expected. However March 27, 2012 is the big outlier, nearly 2 weeks earlier than expected.
Other nectar sources at this time (not shown):
In my opinion, this spring attracted more bees to dandelion flowers than previous years. Thank you to my neighbors who do not spray herbicides.
Strong spring wind gusts made photographing bee foraging difficult and I consequently have not included bees visiting blooming ornamental cherry trees and eastern redbud. What's left on my iPhone are a few lucky snaps of bees on native crabapple (thanks to Trees Atlanta) and rosemary flowers.
My 8-frame hive is wrapped in a hive cozy. On warm afternoons in December and January, bees flew vigorously and performed orientation flight. These 2021-2022 measurements show that bees are most likely consuming their honey stores and raising late winter brood.
Along the Atlanta BeltLine, I saw tall upright yellow flowering Goldenrod plants in sunny areas - see photos.
In recent fair weather, honey bees flew vigorously and returned with yellow pollen seen in the photo collage and I noticed a stronger and sour hive odor consistent with Goldenrod forage.
In late afternoons, I saw a huge number of bees circulating at the sunny hive entrance, busy in orientation flight. In Atlanta, there are potentially many more weeks of flowering Goldenrod left assuming more fair weather. This gives me hope that the hive will have lots of bees going into winter.
Will there be a fall honey harvest? Stay tuned.
Thank you Trees Atlanta for planting pollinator friendly trees like:
I was not going to include rosemary flowers, but iPhone 11 color saturation is fabulous. This Mediterranean native shrub does well in Atlanta's zone 7 hardiness when located in a sunny location.
Currently I can't find bees on dandelions and spiderwort flowers - is there an overabundance of honey bee forage?
Here are a few lucky iPhone photos which
overcome bright back-lighting and fast moving honey bees. While this is not a spectacular year for most winter-flowering ornamental cherry trees, the neighborhood has a few stunning specimens in bloom attracting so many bees that you can hear the buzz at a distance.
Both backyard hives have NOD Bee Cozy R8 insulated hive wraps and do not fly during cold gray winter days. During a week of decidedly sunny days, bees fly vigorously and are found foraging on mahonia. Standing by the mahonia, I looked in direction of the hives for the beeline bearing. A straight 38 ft (11.6 m) line connects hives and mahonia, but the straight line nicks the corner of the chicken coop which is 7 ft (2.1 m) tall. Some bees are seen flying over the coop while other bees fly around the coop. These mahonia foraging bees are of the same mind regarding where and what to forage, but not how to get there.
I consistently see bees gathering water in an overturned bucket on sunny winter days when temperatures almost reach 50 °F. This unplanned mucky water supply is in their collective bee memory, they return to this location whether water is present or not. The neighbor's hot tub is another favorite location - bees learn and develop water foraging habits most likely based on:
Other than color, I'm not able to analyze the bright orange pollen, but it's most likely sourced from winter-flowering ornamental cherry trees blooming in the neighborhood and attracting honey bees.
Using binoculars, I see that red maple trees are not yet flowering. With evidence from previous years, I'll guesstimate that rosemary is the source of the grey pollen.
I enjoyed a break outdoors sitting in warm late fall sunshine. When I returned indoors to continue my work-from-home I heard the familiar buzz, but I was not able to find the bee on my clothing. The next day she was captured in a clear solo cup which are kept handy as a remedy for bee freeloading. The bee was not moving in a coordinated way, so I added a few drops of honey in the clear cup, but she was not interested in feeding.
Taken from my beelining playbook, I placed the clear cup in a darken area to encourage feeding. Yeah, I'm obsessed with beelining and see the world of insects through a beelining lens. For this freeloading bee, light seeking behavior was stronger than foraging behavior.
I read Seeley's Following the Wild Bees and became keenly interested in beelining. I ordered a beelining box from BetterBee and have since sealed the wood with water-based polyurethane. Without success I have been searching for honey bees on wild goldenrod flowers for beelining. Instead I found honey bees on Ryan Gainey Chrysanthemums. You might say my beelining problem is solved, but I don't want to crush the neighbor's flower heads with the beelining box. So, I'll wait and wait some more for honey bees to discover wild goldenrod flowers.
On previous visits to this patch of salvia I didn't find any honey bees, just foraging bumble bees. More recently I found honey bees nectar foraging, but have a closer look - these bees do not enter the flower (they're not pollinating). Most likely carpenter bees chewed holes to rob nectar and these short tongue honey bees are exploiting the holes.
