> I have no clue why maples would produce nectar.  

Because they are either "mostly" or "partly" insect pollinated.

Grew up in NH, worked for a maple sugaring operation when I in my early
teens, also picked their strawberries.   Augured taps, ran tubing, pleasant
work in the spring woods, even when snowshoeing on, and digging down through
4 feet of snow to tap.  This was the 70s, so the tubing at that time did not
have a very long service life - it could not be deployed in fall.  Learned a
bit about maples along the way...

Maples were first thought to exclusively pollinated by insects, producing
the seed pods with the single "Helicopter" wing, but because the pollen can
blow distances in excess of 100 meters, the "wind pollinated" theory also
has some merit.  There isn't even a consistent sexual preference expressed
by the Maple, some blossoms seem male, some seem female, many are clearly
unisexual clusters on the same branch.  These issues remain unresolved to my
knowledge, but it makes sense to me that wind pollination would be the only
mechanism available if the weather was too cold for insects, which used to
be true the majority of the winters, except for those few amazing days each
winter when the sun comes out and warms things up for a day or so to
shirtsleeve temps before returning to ice and snow.

But there is nectar, so insects do have a role to play in pollination if the
temperatures allow flying.  One or two years I had a yard in the Jefferson
National Forest where several hives gained measureable weight just after
valentine's day, but most often one will see this nectar consumed in brood
rearing, or inaccessible due to cold temperatures for the entire bloom
period.  

You can see the bloom against the cloudy skies pretty clearly - it is a
faint purple tinge that starts in current global-warming-modified dates of
about Feb 1 in VA, by Valentine's day in the Hudson Valley between Mohonk
Mountain House and Bear Mountain.

The problem is that if one DID get a crop of Maple Honey, the very robust
maple syrup producers association would send a platoon of lawyers to terrify
anyone putting the term "maple honey" on a label.   And no, the honey does
not taste like maple sugar.  Only the sap tastes like that when boiled down
to a tiny fraction of its original volume.

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html