Honey on tap

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.

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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.