so here it is on march 21st and we're looking outside to see what the bees are going after
these are quaking aspen they still haven't popped yet the flowers aren't blossoming so that's not
the source honeybees are all over this silver maple tree i had to slow the sequence down so
you could see the pollinators working but when you walk past this tree you could just hear it humming
these are some of the earliest sources of nectar and pollen here in the northeastern united states
1300 feet above sea level agricultural zone four so there they are but something much more
interesting than this is what i'm going to share with you today but i thought we'd start off what
do we get from silver maple we get the pollen of course that they need for the bee bread to
feed the brood so they can start building up they also get a really good nectar load
now i have a lot of different silver maples on my property but uh only a few are in this
blossom state right now so there's much more yet to come much more to bloom so this is just getting
started and this tree right here is about 35 feet tall and this honeybee i hope is from my own
apiary
now the tell was really when we could walk around on this nice
warm day it's about 65 degrees listen to the bees in the tree
it's just humming with them it almost sounded like a swarm and that's what got my attention
so i thought let's look into other areas and see what's going on here we are in the wetlands skunk
cabbage and there's a honeybee going right in or coming out of one of these little skunk cabbage
beginnings this is a warm-blooded plant that's right it can actually melt its way through snow
and inside the little cavity there that houses the pollen that this honeybee worker
is packing under hind legs it generates heat so it's much warmer than even the outside air
now the good thing is i decided one of my goals this year was to get video of the bees actually
getting pollen from this gun cabbage do you think they get nectar out of there
nah it's just pollen but that's enough because that's what we need to kick it
off and remember we also have the silver maple trees to help kick that off and here she goes
back in now last year i walked all over the wetlands and tried to find the bees getting in
and out of the skunk cabbage but i would just see one zip away in the distance and what i found out
this year was if i walk in from downwind and wherever i could smell the skunk cabbage the
strongest i figured you know the honeybees are gonna follow that scent so i actually
went to the patches of skunk cabbage that smelled the strongest and here we go
here's another worker bee and this is of course slowed way down because the action when these
bees fly in and out of the skunk cabbage is actually pretty fast so it took me a lot of time
to sit down and wait for some of these bees to come out here's one right here and there's the
pollen so when you see the pollen on your landing boards a lot of people say well what's that light
yellow pollen what's the source of it well for me right now two predominant sources
silver maple trees which are among the earliest
to provide pollen and nectar and of course now the skunk cabbage
so the willow trees have not blossomed yet they're going to be a great pollen resource later
and this honeybee actually came right back to the same plant later and there she is
they actually tend to spend a long time inside i sat for as long as five or six
minutes looking at the same skunk cabbage plant waiting for the worker bee to come out of it
so they do have the advantage while they're in there even though it's shaded in dark
and the pollen looks kind of like a little yellow ping pong ball kind of a small one
and uh the bees fly really fast in and out of there that's real time
that's real time there but the bees get warmed up once they're inside then they zip back and
tell the other bees through the waggle dance where these things are located and they get to
that little area and then they start to smell the skunk cabbage and then they home it on the smell
so thank goodness the wind was down so i could get these shots earlier it was a little breezy
there when i was trying to film the ones in the maple trees that one didn't seem to have much
pollen on its leg so there was a correlation too the workers that spent the longest amount of time
inside the skunk cabbage came out with the most pollen on their legs
so a lot of people want to know should we continue to feed should we put sugar syrup on our hives
should we put pollen patties in there well in my opinion once the environment wakes up
like this once those tell-tale maple trees silver maples remember once they start to provide nectar
it's like a cascade other environmental resources will also kick in one after another
and we'll end up with the fruiting trees like the cherries the apple trees and things like that
dandelion will come in then clover so we're actually well in now and unless you have a really
weak colony that needs your help or you've done a split or you've collected a swarm or something
like that once the environment provides i don't see any reason to really put pollen patties in
your hive or sugar syrup a strong colony will have forages out look at all the pollen on this
workers legs now this took me a lot of time to get i was really excited to get this sequence because
i like it when the worker bee lingers a little bit and hovers around because what do you think she's
doing she's also registering the location of this plant and she will come back later
or other foragers from the same colony will come back to this location to get more pollen
remember there's no nectar coming from a skunk cabbage so the pollen's critical for the brood
production
here's another one fully loaded and look at the shape of the plant of course the scott
cabbage what would be called a cabbage because later when it matures the leaves are huge a little
bigger than a basketball so this entire area in here will be wall-to-wall skunk cabbage leaves
but this is the time of year when they're really providing for our pollinators and
i haven't seen other pollinators going in and out in fact just the honeybees so far
and as i mentioned before this plant will actually
melt its way through the snow and ice so if we still had snow cover here in march
this plant would still grow on its own it generates its own heat which is just amazing to me
and this one scraped off one of her pollen balls there and dropped it right back in the plant
so you might think well would she come back later and scoop that little ball of
pollen right back onto her hind leg no they don't it's funny once they drop it that's it
they'll go to the plant and they'll collect a new batch of pollen so here again a last look
on our way out of the silver maple these are just blossoming now the nectar is strong from
here as well as pollen so this is a fantastic kickoff plant so if you're planting something you
have a small area small yard trees will provide much more than just a grass area on your lawn
so do both plant clover things like that dandelions are okay clover provides throughout
the year i hope you enjoy this little glimpse of what's going on in my neck of the woods
on this march 21st day so pollen and nectar coming in things are looking good thanks for watching