Bees in Paradise

We are visiting my mom in Arizona and it has been quite the vacation. We've been together for about 10 days and the kids are really wearing on each other. They can irritate each other faster than the speed of light. It is taxing my patience to play referee.

Of course no trip would be complete without bees. This is a Mexican Bird of Paradise in my mom's front yard. We've seen bees in it every day.

My mom had a funny lesson in the need for bees. She has an enclosed porch and has one of the upside down pots where she's growing a tomato. She's been quite unhappy with it because she hasn't gotten any tomatoes despite the lovely foliage. If you grow the tomato in a cage so the bees cannot pollinate the flowers, you will not have tomatoes. We moved it outside and are going to build it a canopy that is open to the bees.

I chatted with some local beekeepers at my mom's farmer's market. One person is a hobbyist like me and the other is a small apiary. The farmers are militantly organic, but had some interesting suggestions on how to manage my own bees in a gentler way.