Aprici

Another relatively warm sunny day and the bees are out in the middle of winter.  Both hives appear to be doing well.  Something must be flowering out there since the foragers are coming back laden with bright yellow pollen.  Walking around I did not see any flowers, but the bees have found a source.  It would be interesting to find out what they are harvesting and plant some to ensure they get an early pollen source.

The bees are doing well and appear to be very active today.  It is a warm sunny day, strange for December.  The bees are harvesting pollen and flying around.  Not sure where they are getting the pollen, but I see many returning bees with plenty of light-coloured pollen on their legs.  They appear to investigate anything lightly coloured, like my work gloves.  If this keeps up I might need to remove the winter entrance constraints as they are creating a traffic jam at the entrance of the hives.

Purchased an Improved Meyer Lemon to start the citrus collection. The improved Meyer lemon is a virus free version of the Meyer Lemon.  This lemon seems to be a cross between a true lemon and a mandarin orange.   It has nicely shaped foliage and is flowering and fruiting prolifically.  The fruit is slightly rounder than a true lemon.

Visited Fruit Trees and More - a fruit tree nursery in North Saanich with a great many interesting fruit trees.  Spoke at length with Bob Duncan.  Fascinating fellow with some interesting ideas that appear to work:

Planted the brilliant red Osakazuki maple, the very pretty Sourwood tree, and the beautiful blue-green Vanderwulf's Pyramid pine by the central drainage pond today.  Used a combination of local soil and compost mounded up about a foot high to ensure good drainage near the roots of the trees.

Fed the C1 colony 1L of syrup.  A warm day after a morning frost.  The bees seem to be doing well, quite active in the warmth today.  Found a wasp in one of the hives, surprising the bees did not kill it.

We joined the BC Fruit Tester's Association today.  The BC Fruit Tester's Association tries out new and interesting fruits for the area, and shares information about fruit growing.  They also provide root stock and bud wood for making your own grafts, and sometimes berry and other plants.  They had an interesting exhibit at the Westshore Mall today (and yesterday) featuring about 100 sample apple types, information on diseases, and apple identification.  Turns out our yellow-green apples at the farm are Golden Delicious, which I rather suspected but nice to have it confirmed.

Purchased a small manual two-frame stainless steel used honey extractor in preparation for extracting honey next year.  Although this year's comb honey crop was excellent - light colour, great flowery taste - we found that a lot of people do not really know how to use comb honey and most folks are used to extracted honey, so we will produce mostly extracted honey next year along with some comb honey.

Purchased a sourwood tree for the foliage and the bees, and a Rosea lavender for the lavender collection.  The sourwood should be late blooming and provide nectar well into fall for the bees (still appears to have some flowers now).

Many fruit trees available, of decent size.  Purchased a brilliant red maple, a blue-green pine, and a black currant to see how it does over the winter here.  They mentioned sourwood as an interesting foliage tree for the area.  It appears it is a good tree for nectar for bees.