Honey on tap
Friday February 27th 2015, 12:04 am
Filed under: Garden

The first two plum blossoms opened today, joining with the tea roses and the blueberry, peach, and mandarin flowers, and it has begun to be heavenly the moment you step outside. I marveled this evening thinking, but it’s not spring yet! But then I walked across the yard taking note of how, yes, actually, it’s beginning to be. California, remember? Apples, cherry, lemon, raspberry, more peaches–there will be far more to come. There is actually a fruit bud on the Comice pear, and they only bear on three- to ten-year-old wood.

The mango bud stalks are noticeably longer than two days ago, and I’m thinking, especially as the side shoots grow, that what I need is a better way to hold the Christmas lights up on that tree; there’s only one side branch to wrap them over and I don’t want the cord to sit at the notches where things are growing from, but for now, they are.

I know I obsess a little over the thing. It’s just, I’ve never seen a mango tree grow before.

Today I saw the indiegogo campaign for the beekeeping setup (great article there) that would require no smoke, no lifting out, no stress on the bees. Just peek in the window, see that it’s ready, open the tap and let the honey slowly fill up your jars and then turn it off. The bees get right to work resealing everything at their end.

We certainly have enough fruit trees to keep a hive busy and happy and there are a lot of urban beekeepers in the area who would surely love one of those. I’m not intending (yet) to become one–but I very much love that this thing has been invented. It’s an idea that will clearly greatly increase the number of people willing to keep bees. And we definitely need those bees.

——–

Edited 24 hours later to mention an important link re the Flow. I had no idea it could mess with the genetic diversity of the hive, but apparently it can. These professional beekeepers had some points to make that definitely bear attention.


3 Comments so far
Leave a comment

I would LOVE to do that but I made a promise to my dad as we sat in an emergency room. He had just had one too many stings from his bee hive and they were trying to save the skin on his hand. Daddy looked at my crying face said “I won’t have any more bees if you don’t” (trying to make me laugh as I didn’t go ANYWHERE near those bees as a child or teenager).

I kept him to his promise and I think I need to keep mine. But I sure would love to go in with someone that would do the taking care of the hive.

Comment by Afton 02.27.15 @ 5:08 am

The Flow hive sounds so interesting, but I’ve also seen some articles against it. Apparently there is a lot of plastic involved, and I am leary of plastics and food. Also, it kind of disrupts the normal way bees do things and I’m just not sure about the whole thing. But it was certainly interesting and I’d be interested if it didn’t harm the bees and put toxins into the honey.

Comment by Jane 02.27.15 @ 7:42 am

Thanks for the photos of the mango buds. Amazing to see that.

Comment by LisaRR 02.28.15 @ 12:19 pm



Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

(required)

(required)