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  • Author Author: ralphjy
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Bees in Oregon 2026

ralphjy

  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).

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I was out this afternoon taking some pics of the plants in the front yard.

Camas

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Oregon Iris next to one of the water plates that my wife put out for the bees.

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Then, I happened to see a large bumblebee on the another camas plant.

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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.

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And a zoomed out view for perspective.  My house is on the left.

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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 Smile.

 

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.

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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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  • in reply to beacon_dave

    Almost like they are posing for you Relaxed.

    We have shifted into fall weather and we have nothing blooming in the yard (we didn't plan too well this year).  Bee activity has dropped to zero as you would expect.  I just took out the tomato and cucumber plants last week.

    Dogs and I walked by the local hive earlier this week and there was still a fair amount of activity, but not sure where they are going as there isn't much blooming nearby.

  • in reply to ralphjy

    More like laughing at me as I had to wait around two hours for that one to finally reappear for the photoshoot.

    One has had its pollen baskets stuffed full like saddlebags, so not sure if this is for hibernation or a sign that she has already started her nest and will be active over Winter.

    The heavy rain showers here knocked a lot of the flowers off but the plants have just deployed more, so garden back in full bloom again despite some overnight temperatures getting close to freezing. I was pruning the Roses this afternoon to try and get them back under some sort of control and noticed some new buds that look like they may pop open into flower soon.

    The new Summer/Autumn heathers have finished flowering, but surprisingly not much interest in them shown by either the bumblebees or the honey bees. In the meantime, the Winter/Spring heathers have been making good progress (been on a diet of sulphur chips and liquid seaweed all Summer), so hopefully a bit more of a show of flowers this time. There may be more interest shown in those ones as there will be less alternatives available at that time of year.

    I harvested the seeds from the purple Gladioli this year just to see what they would do and they have already germinated and poked their heads through the soil in the seed tray. They tend to hybridise easily, so will have to wait around three years to see what I've actually ended up with.

    I'm not sure where the nearest beehives are around here but I have quite a few honey bees visiting at the moment.