beacon_dave and I have been trading messages about flowers and bees in response to my Earth Day post. He has a BeeBox nestbox for bumblebees and I mentioned to him that I've never been able to locate a natural bumblebee nest. Well, today that changed and I thought I'd share that and info in general about how bees are doing in Oregon in the early spring.
My wife has been planting more native plants in order to help stimulate the native bees in our area. She has received a Backyard Habitat Certification for her efforts. This year the native plants have been slow to bloom because a cooler and wetter than normal spring (on average this is a typical spring, but weather has come in multi-week bursts that I think is hard on plants). It's gotten consistently warmer and sunnier in the past few weeks and the plants are starting to respond. We decided that it was the correct time to put out our Mason bee cocoons (actually ours were wiped out by wasps last year, but a friend had a bumper crop and she shared). Mason bees hatch when the temperature is consistently above 18-20 C, but you want to wait until you have nearby flowers to support them. Unlike honeybees, Mason bees have a very short foraging range. Good news is that the cocoons have hatched and we have lots of bees in the front and back yards (we have a Mason bee house in each yard).
I was out this afternoon taking some pics of the plants in the front yard.
Camas
Oregon Iris next to one of the water plates that my wife put out for the bees.
Then, I happened to see a large bumblebee on the another camas plant.
I then saw it fly off int the direction of a large pine tree on my neighbor's property. And when I walked over there I saw it on the ground digging and then it took off and entered a hole to the left of where it was digging (I wasn't able to get that on video, but I saw it go in and out quickly).
Here is a picture of the entrance to the nest.
And a zoomed out view for perspective. My house is on the left.
Anyway, I'm very pleased to have found my first bumblebee nest. I'm a little concerned that it is so exposed and next to the sidewalk. I'll have to watch and see. Haven't been many bumblebees yet this year. I'll have to resist the urge to look inside 
.
Other bees
I've started seeing lots of honey bees the last couple of weeks. Not sure where they are coming from but their foraging range is supposed to be about 2 miles. There were a lot of them in the French lavender today. The flowers were swaying in the breeze, so the focus isn't that great.
There were mason bees and sweat bees in the French lavender also, but they were moving about so quickly that I couldn't get a decent picture. The sweat bees are also quite a bit smaller.
The good news is that lots of bees are out now. It should be amazing when the Fireweed and Catmint are in bloom.
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