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Apart from the honeybee, practically all bees and bumblebees hibernate in a state of torpor.

Occasionally, you may come across one or two bumblebees in the cold season, when you are turning over sods in your garden, but you have to be a really keen observer to see them at all.

They keep their wings and feet pressed tightly against their bodies, and in spite of their often colorful attire you may very well mistake them for lumps of dirt.

I must add at once that these animals are what we call `` queens '', young females that have mated in the previous summer or autumn.

It is on them alone that the future of their race depends, for all their relatives ( mothers, husbands, brothers, and unmated sisters ) have perished with the arrival of the cold weather.

Even some of the queens will die before the winter is over, falling prey to enemies or disease.

The survivors emerge on some nice, sunny day in March or April, when the temperature is close to 50-degrees and there is not too much wind.

Now the thing for us to do is to find ourselves a couple of those wonderful flowering currants such as the red Ribes sanguineum of our Pacific Northwest, or otherwise a good sloe tree, or perhaps some nice pussy willow in bloom, preferably one with male or staminate catkins.

The blooms of Ribes and of the willow and sloe are the places where large numbers of our early insects will assemble: honeybees, bumblebees, and other wild bees, and also various kinds of flies.

It is a happy, buzzing crowd.