I was cleaning dishes on the tenth day of January around noon and when I looked through the open kitchen window at some point, I was quite surprised to see a few bees buzzing around the small wildflowers on my lawn.
Some of those buzzers were real bees, others were bee-mimicking flies.

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This opening picture shows a European honey bee (Apis mellifera) on the right and a syrphid fly Eristalis tenax on the left.
Both species are enjoying the nectar produced by the common dandelion flower (Taraxacum officinale).

Bees and flies were visiting two types of flowers on that sunny winter day. The Taraxacum officinale mentioned earlier and the much smaller Veronica persica shown in this shot.

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Here you can see the Veronica persica flowers photographed from different angles.

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Honey bees are a bit heavy for these small flowers on fairly soft, gracile stalks so they look clumsy while collecting the nectar.

Here can you see yet another bee hanging on the flower.

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In this set of four photographs, each bee is more or less on the top of the flower. That's becouse each shot was taken in a fragment of a second before the bee ended up hanging on the flower at the end of a bent stalk.

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The flies are the same size, or even slightly bigger than the bees, but it seems that their body constitution is surprisingly lighter. The Eristalis tenax shown in this photograph is feeding on the small flower quite comfortably.
In the following shot ...

... I came closer to the fly.

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Here you can see a bee on a dandelion flower.

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Through this set of nine photographs, you can observe the same bee collecting the nectar by circling the center of the flower.

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Here you can see a fly feeding on the same kind of flower in a similar way.

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This bee has accumulated a nice amount of pollen on its hind legs.

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Here you can see the same bee in various poses while circling the center of the flower.

Here you can see a bee on the Veronica persica flower. This one also has a pellet made of orange-colored pollen mixed with a bit of nectar.
In the following photograph ...