Seeing Bumblebees in Winter in Seattle and Camano Island?
- Jonna Semke
- 7 days ago
- 3 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
What winter-active bumblebees reveal about how gardens function in Seattle
If bumblebees are active in your garden during winter, especially around flowering shrubs like mahonia, it’s not an anomaly. It’s a sign that your landscape is offering food and shelter at one of the most vulnerable points in the year.
In Seattle and on Camano Island, winter-active bumblebees are native queens emerging briefly on mild days. Winter-blooming plants like mahonia make those moments of survival possible.
That short burst of activity reveals far more about how a garden functions than any summer display ever could.
Why Bumblebees Are Active in Winter
In the Pacific Northwest, bumblebees overwinter not as colonies, but as fertilized queens. They shelter through the coldest months and emerge briefly on mild winter days to feed before returning to cover.
These winter foraging flights are not casual. Early nectar access helps determine whether a queen survives long enough to establish a new colony in spring. When food is available at the right moment, the odds improve.
This is not a mistake in the seasonal calendar. It’s adaptation.
Mahonia and the First Leg of the Relay
Mahonia anchors the winter landscape because it offers three things at once: nectar, efficiency, and shelter.
Dense flower clusters allow queens to feed quickly. Evergreen foliage creates protected microclimates. Bloom timing fills one of the most critical nectar gaps of the year.
Mahonia rarely works alone. In resilient landscapes, it functions as the first handoff in a longer seasonal sequence.
Other Winter Bloomers Supporting Bees and Birds
Winter gardens that support wildlife rely on a small group of overlapping plants, not an exhaustive list.
In Seattle and on Camano Island right now, that overlap often includes:
Red-flowering currant (Ribes sanguineum), beginning to open well before leaf-out and supporting both bumblebee queens and overwintering Anna’s hummingbirds.
Osoberry (Oemleria cerasiformis), setting buds early and signaling the next seasonal shift for insects.
Winter-blooming heaths and heathers, offering steady nectar on mild days.
Camellia (select single-flowered forms), occasionally used by hummingbirds during winter bloom.
Some plants are flowering. Others are preparing. Wildlife responds to both.
Not Honeybees, and Not Out of Season
Large, fuzzy bees active in winter are often mistaken for honeybees behaving oddly. In reality, bumblebees are native and adapted to cool, wet conditions.
Honeybees remain clustered in hives through winter, relying on stored resources. Bumblebee queens do not.
If you’re seeing bumblebees now, they’re doing exactly what they evolved to do.
What Wildlife by Design Looks Like in Winter
Winter support isn’t about planting everything. It’s about placing the right plants, in the right sequence, with restraint.
Designing for wildlife in winter means:
Providing bloom before spring officially arrives
Allowing plants to move through winter without heavy cleanup
Thinking in overlaps rather than peak moments
These decisions shape whether winter becomes a bottleneck or a bridge.
Designing for Wildlife
The same plant can behave very differently depending on where it’s placed and what surrounds it. That’s why wildlife-supporting gardens don’t happen by accident.
The observations shared here come from ongoing design work in Seattle and on Camano Island, where seasonal stress tests landscapes quickly.
You’ll find related essays, plant profiles, and seasonal thinking throughout the Wildlife by Design series.
Comments