Fruittrees

[Chickenlady]

I have a cute little orchard...and this year is a disaster.
I had blossoms...lots of them....and when I checked my trees yesterday...I have no fruit.
Totally NOTHING, no cherries, no apples, no pears no plums...I have a few berries on the red berry bushes..and strawberries,but that's it.

wondering if it is the late spring...the hard wind while the blossom was there...

Does anybody else any fruit coming? Am I the only one or are there others?

[ooptec]

Mine are too young yet and suffered a serious set back when it hailed so hard it beat the branches off 2 summers ago

[Fowler]

We changed our old siding for cedar shingles on the house. The mason bees always loved them. You could see loads of them around the house as they would go up under the shingles to lay their eggs. I even got a couple of mason bee houses.

This year I haven't really seen any. I'm a biot concerned. Hard winter maybe? I'll be checking the bee houses in the fall and am hoping that I'll find egg cells in there.

[ooptec]

I've also read that old teapots buried so just the spout is exposed make excellent houses for mason bees

[Sweetened]

There were very few bees here this year, and I believe it's related to the pesticide use in the area. Next year I will attempt a couple bee colonies, but I suspect I will lose them to that exact reason. I read a few articles this year listing bee numbers at record lows across Canada.

[niglefritz]

There were very few bees here this year, and I believe it's related to the pesticide use in the area.  Next year I will attempt a couple bee colonies, but I suspect I will lose them to that exact reason.  I read a few articles this year listing bee numbers at record lows across Canada.

Yes, we've heard of losses here too. That and as much as we see cabbage butterflies, we are only seeing the white ones, one swallowtail, and only 2 small monarchs this year that could fly. The other few we saw were malformed and would never fly. So sad. When we first moved here there were so many.

[ooptec]

It might be the cold wet spring too as didn't notice hardly any till just lately, is a lot more now but are very small instead of the big ones this time of year usually

[niglefritz]

Yes, but we also saw very few last year too. We believe they are on the decline due to modern conventional ag practices. We heard on a documentary about monarchs that they highly suspect this too after ruling out other factors.

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