Feature and a web part - what happens when you remove the feature

Question

I put a web part on a page through a feature.

I deactivate the feature.

Then when I go to activate it again, i loop through the wpManager.WebParts to determine if it is already on the page

using (SPLimitedWebPartManager wpManager = site.GetLimitedWebPartManager(url + page, System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts.PersonalizationScope.Shared)) {
      try {
         SPLimitedWebPartCollection existingParts = wpManager.WebParts;

         //I loop through checking to see if it is on the page) here
    ...

If I manually activate/deactivate it all works fine. The problem occurs when I activate the feature from another feature. Yes, I have one feature that acts as a wrapper which then activates other features in a particular order. Well, when activating this wrapper and doing the loop above the existingParts.Count = 0

I cannot explain this behavior. Ideas?