Bees Christmas shopping??

Today was a tee shirt day here in Durham, NC, hard to believe Christmas is right around the corner. Anyway I was out in the garden at 10AM today and the bees were busy. First thing I saw was 2 undertaker bees removing dead bees. All the worker bees at one point in their short life have different jobs to preform at different ages, undertaking is one of there jobs during their cycle.

Anyway the bees were very active bringing in pollen in 3 different colors, orange, tan and, off white. I was very surprised to see so many of them bring in pollen. I went Christmas shopping today and summarized these wild possibilities. Dandelion, henbit, frost asters(still) clovers white and possibly red. I did see all of these in bloom today except red clover.  Also I have seen Japanese almond these plants usually bloom late January or February. Maple is in bloom also, not seen any here, it blooms late February or March usually.

Other nectar sources that I witnessed were Kanjiro camellia in the garden. We have two other camellias in bloom too. Pansies and violas are here too, but mostly drowned looking after last nights rains. I would guess a few other shrubs like elaeagnus would produce a lot of pollen as well.

These videos were taken with my new Ipod Touch.

Speaking of tee shirts today I wore my new Eat More Kale tee shirt and 3 people I met knew about it. Eat More Kale is a one man show in Vermont, Bo prints his tee shirts one at a time. Anyway I got an Eat More Kale shirt and Meg got a Compost shirt in yesterdays mail. Bo is being sued by Chik-fli-a because his tees dilute their message.

Karen, you were right on the Christmas lights it was a tractor on my last post. Looked into taking stained glass classes today, don't tell Meg.