First time I have looked at this forum (bees and beekeeping)
Reading your post, Sunday morning, a cold snowy Sunday morning, was just so delightfull.
I can see it happening. In a few years. A very pretty pcture.
Seems many people from Nova Scotia post on various forums at Garden Web

Will keep a look out to see what is said about this

The underlying question is how bees determine what plants to visit. We have a huge tree in our yard (haven't identified it yet) which is covered with tiny flowers and when you stand under the tree, there are so many bees working its flowers that the tree veritably hums. It also appeared that, for a while, during the peak of this trees' flowering, that the bees were ignoring every other flower in the area, as if my two beehives had collectively decided that this tree was the richest source of nectar, and so they would, at least temporarily, ignore everything else. I didn't even see them on the sunflowers, which bees ordinarily love. Now that the flowering of this big tree is winding down, I see the bees back on their usual haunts, e.g. the sunflowers, the loquats, etc. Now, I'm no expert in bee behavior, but I suspect that what happened in my hives is that some bees came back from the big tree as it was just coming into flower, reported a massive potential for nectar by doing that dance thing that they do, and over the course of the next few weeks, all the bees coming back said, in effect, "screw the other flowers--we got one stop shopping on that big tree, let's concentrate our efforts there." I'm saying all this because I'd love to hear from a real expert, someone who knows bee behavior well, and could tell us (this forum) whether the bee dances in beehives really do say something like, "huge source of nectar at these coordinates, let's work this tree exclusively." I know that bees can be very organized, but I'm not sure if an entire hive would be organized enough to focus on one very lucrative source of nectar, or whether they organize themselves in groups and each group takes a different nectar source, or whether its every bee for herself. Anybody care to enlighten us?

Thanks Diane. We heard about that snowstorm on the news - brr. I just missed it - was in the Barrie area at Thanksgiving...All we've had so far is a bit of hail...Have you considered a small greenhouse or sunroom?

It is fascinating isn't it, thisbud4u. Potentially one of those lifetime studies. What got me thinking harder about providing lots of food sources for bees, even if we don't set up hives and get honey, was a recent David Suzuki program about them.

I started doing searches on bee generalists and specialists, looking for a primer...Here's one site I found. And will go to Wikipedia. In the meantime I do hope somebody here chimes in.

Here is a link that might be useful: native bees

I just looked up the Suzuki website - maybe it will answer my question?

BTW It was fun imagining your bee scenario thisbud4u. :)

Here is a link that might be useful: suzuki program on bees

does hyssop and raspberries bloom at the same time of year???? if not the raspberries will be pollinated just as they should....probably even if they bloom at the same time.....get some bees of your own or ask a beekeeper if they need a place to keep bees....this will ensure plenty of bees at your site

Thisbud4U, might you have a 'bee tree' or Linden tree in your yard? They are also called broad leaf lime (I think). They are bee magnets, have nice smelling flowers that are small. The 'fruits' are small woody balls.