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"Bob La Londe" wrote in message
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Is a honey bee pattern a solid one? Maybe in the fall when all the drones
are getting kicked out of the hives and dying in the cold?

My absolute best day fly fishing I was casting a honey bee and letting it
drift over a pocket and down a riffle at the bottom of the pocket. I got
hit almost every drift for the first 30 or 40 passes. That particular day
was mid summer, but I was wondering why it did so good for me. I had
tried three or four other patterns in the same spot before that one. I
only saw one actual bee on the water the whole day. In fact it was after
I spotted it that I tried the bee pattern.

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Bob La Londe
http://www.YumaBassMan.com

Some years back I ran into a situation where trout were certainly feeding on
bees. There's a spot on the Fraser River I fish, a small creek enters the
river and on the adjacent land a farmer kept bees. The Fraser has a fishery
for cutthroat in the winter and early spring and by late feb or in March we
usually have some warm spring like days. I fished here on a couple of
occasions on such warm days when trout were taking something off the surface
but I couldn't figure out what. I did catch a couple on nymphs and streamers
and killed a pair. These fish proved to be stuffed with honey bees. The way
I figured it - the bees flew as the day warmed but in the cooler air over
the river "ran out of gas" and fell into the river attracting the trout.
Unfortunately the farmer doesn't keep bees anymore and due to a plague of
mites most commercial bee operators do not keep bees over the winter after
taking their crop of honey 0 but destroy the hive and buy bees from out of
province in the spring