Fruit Trees and Dan's Bees

From Dan Joseph, our VP and Building & Grounds Committee Chair:

-----

​Exciting developments at the Paradise Guilds Gardens!

We are planting a small orchard consisting of approx. 12 or so different kinds of fruit trees. We have 2 types of cherries, 1 nectarine, 4 peaches, 1 Santa Rosa plumb, 1 pluot, 2 apples, and 1 mandarin.

It's going to take a few years to go from planting the trees to pies and jam, but we have a good start.

Many thanks to our gardening friend and expert Richard for putting them in the ground.

Another big step toward sustainability is the addition of 2 bee hives, perched atop of a large cut-off Redwood tree stump, spittin’ distance, as they say, from the orchard.

We, with the help of local bee keeper Ken Smith, of Smith Appiaries, emptied 2- packages into our 2 hive boxes, both around 3 pounds each, somewhere in the 8,000-10,000 bees range, total for both.

They will eventually grow into mature hives consisting of about 50,000 bees per hive, with the Queen laying over 1,000 eggs a day. That’s what you call busy as a bee – you go girl!

(Click on the photos below for a larger view.)