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| 3-year-old NC-1 Pawpaw. 5.4.15 |
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| 3-year-old Sunflower Pawpaw. 5.4.15 |
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| NC-1 Pawpaw flower shedding pollen. 5.4.15 |
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| Collecting pawpaw pollen. 5.4.15 |
Today I pollenated pawpaw flowers. I've been watching closely for flowers at the pollen shedding stage.
The NC-1 is the largest of the 3 pawpaw plants that I planted summer 2012. My goal has been to transfer pollen from Sunflower, which is smaller, to NC-1 stigmas. However, each has only a few flowers, and what I do depends on the stage of each flower.
As it happened, 2, of the NC-1 pawpaw flowers were shedding pollen today. When the entire flower is a dark burgundy, that's when it starts to shed pollen. When the flower is almost all dark burgundy, it is not shedding pollen yet. That is when I'm hoping the stigmas are receptive
The pawpaw flower makes a lot of pollen. Much more than most of my other fruits
I pollinated 2 flowers of Sunflower with pollen from NC-1. I also pollinated a flower of NC-1 with pollen from a different NC-1 flower. That is not considered an option, but maybe this tree has not read that book. If the flowers on Sunflower start producing pollen when flowers on NC-1 appear receptive, I will transfer pollen in that direction.
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| Pawpaw flower prior to shedding pollen. 5.4.15 |
Good morning, Daniel! It's your Ridgefield neighbor here. I see you've been as busy as your bees lately! Clearly, i have a lot to catch up on.
ReplyDeleteJust thought i'd send you an update - our two top bar hive colonies didn't even make it into winter. :( But it was a very educational year, and we'll soon pick up a new package to try again.
Since your colonies survived the winter and indeed, seem to be thriving), i thought i'd ask what you did differently last year, and also, did the bees "clean up" the old, icky comb? And did you treat at all last year? We're pretty committed to being treatment-free, and we had such a varroa problem last year that i'm wondering if a treatment-free approach will even be possible for our area. Unlike last year, this year, we're starting with supposedly treatment-free stock, so that will hopefully make all the difference.
Cheers for now, and happy beekeeping!
Nice to hear from you!
ReplyDeleteThe main thing I did was feed them several times through the winter. Their comb emptied of honey and pollen, and I think feeding helped.
I'm not sure I like the horizontal top bar hive. They cross-comb like crazy, then I don't get access to the combs for any purpose. I was ill and could not maintain as closely as I wanted.
I have a new Warre hive that might work better, might not. Not sure how to set it up yet.
One hive suffered colony collapse - not dead bees, they just all disappeared.
I am picking up a new box today. These will be Carniolan-Russian mix, supposedly more adapted to local climate than Italian bees.
No way! We must have (once again) been at the same place, just moments apart! I'm assuming you got your bees from Bee Thinking? Same here. I'm so eager to get your feedback on how these bees compare to your Italian (i think you have Italians, yes?) survivors ...
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, i'm so sorry to learn that you were ill over the winter. I hope the therapy of your magnificent garden returns you to full vigor very soon. You really have created quite a little slice of heaven there.
Warre hives are so fascinating to me. Have you seen the link of the fellow harvesting honey out of the Warre? I'll find it for you and send it in a separate note. :) Dinner awaits!
We must have been!
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting watching them on their first day. They do look different from the Italian bees - these new bees seem to have a darker body. I saw some sharing the same flower today, some large flowered purple Allium.
Having now set up both Warre and horizontal top bar hives, I'm curious about what I think of the Warre. It's a little confusing to me, but I think the Warre might work out better that the horizontal top bar. The horizontal, if they get cross-linked honeycomb, I can't think of anything to do about it. The Warre has removable boxes. If the box with the queen in it gets cross-combed, that should not carry over to the lower boxes.
The Warre also has a place for mites to fall under a bee-excluding screen, which might make for better hyguene. We'll see.
We must have been!
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting watching them on their first day. They do look different from the Italian bees - these new bees seem to have a darker body. I saw some sharing the same flower today, some large flowered purple Allium.
Having now set up both Warre and horizontal top bar hives, I'm curious about what I think of the Warre. It's a little confusing to me, but I think the Warre might work out better that the horizontal top bar. The horizontal, if they get cross-linked honeycomb, I can't think of anything to do about it. The Warre has removable boxes. If the box with the queen in it gets cross-combed, that should not carry over to the lower boxes.
The Warre also has a place for mites to fall under a bee-excluding screen, which might make for better hyguene. We'll see.