I have noticed that here in Dorset, (southern England) gorse goes out of flower (except the dwarf variety) at about the same time that the heather, which occupies the same heathland terrain, comes into flower. Could they have evolved this pattern to avoid pollinator competition and maximise their own reproductive efficiency? Naturally, there are not too many large hollow trees or other suitable nest sites on heathland and so bees have to fly a long way to work these plants. When Prof Francis Ratnieks was at Sheffield University (he's now at Sussex Uni) he had his students marking and tracking bees and found that they went (if my memory serves) up to 14km ( almost 9 miles) to get the the heather. Chris *********************************************** 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