A Strange and Buzzy Month of May

May was not what we expected.

After a few relatively mild springs, this one arrived cold and reluctant - grey skies stretching into weeks that should have felt like early summer, and frost just days before our frost-free date of May 24th. Unusually late compared to these last few years. The gardens just held their breath it seems, and the landscaping season started late. There was still so much to do! And so I found myself spending more time than usual in the greenhouse, caring for plants, while the world outside stayed stubbornly and frustratingly cool, wet and windy.

That's when I started noticing the bees.

Not just one or two - a whole community of them, more than I could remember seeing in previous years. I am not an entomologist, so I can't offer you a tidy field report. But here is what I observed: honeybees and bumblebees, going about their familiar business in the greenhouse - a familiar sight for sure. But what surprised me is what looked to me like Mason bees - furry little faces, dark colouring, purposeful, and the kind of bee that doesn't have to wait for warm weather. One of them hovered near me like a hummingbird sometimes does, looking straight into my eyes in what I imagined was a way of saying "Thank you!" It is said that the Mason bee is the most docile of all native bees in Ontario.

Tiny bees were also spotted in our greenhouse - some of them so small they could almost be mistaken for flies. And others that I simply couldn't identify - different sizes, different patterns, a lovely diversity I perhaps wasn't present enough to notice before.

I have a theory about the Mason bees, though I hold it loosely. There are lots of apple trees and orchards locally, and Mason bees are devoted apple blossom pollinators. And unlike other bees like leafcutter bees whose emergence peaks in late spring when the days get warm and sunny, Mason bees will forage in cold and drizzle, which may explain why orchardists value them so highly. But apple blossoms are vulnerable to late frost. A cold snap at the wrong moment can damage or kill the flowers entirely, leaving bees that have already emerged with far fewer blossoms to visit. Could that have been part of what drew them into the greenhouse - the warmth, yes, but also the flowers after some frosty nights? I don't know. The question stayed with me: why were they here?

The tiny bees were their own revelation. There are approximately 400 species of native bees in Ontario, the vast majority of them solitary and small enough to go completely unnoticed: mistaken for flies maybe, or simply not seen at all. Many of them are sweat bees, members of the family Halictidae, often brilliantly metallic green or copper, some striped, though some are so small and dark they're easy to dismiss. Just last week in the greenhouse, I watched one little guy working its way methodically across the blooms of a Tahitian Bridal Veil - a trailing tropical plant from Central America, its flowers no bigger than a pencil eraser - and felt something close to astonishment. Here was a bee, shaped by thousands of years of Ontario woodland and meadow, quite happily visiting a plant from another continent entirely. Apparently no one told it those tiny blooms are not from around here and it didn't mind at all.

What strikes me most, looking back on this cold and unusual May, is how much was happening that I simply hadn't been paying attention to in the past. It took a slow season - a late start, more hours in the greenhouse, fewer places to rush off to - to make me stand still long enough to witness it. In retrospect, there might be something to be said in favour of an unpredictable spring. It kept me in one place. And in one place, I finally started to notice who else was there.