No Pears Bis: It's Not the End of the Bees, It Seems

This morning I checked out two other pear trees in the neighborhood to see how they had fared this spring.

As I recounted in the last post, we don't have any this year for reasons unknown.  My greatest fear was that the lack was due to the great Bee Crash, which may have devastating effects on food production.  Many, many crops need bees to pollinate, pears among them. 

Ironically, living in the centre of the city may be good for bees, since most municipal governments have stopped using pesticides and herbicides in their open spaces.  In addition, gardens in our part of town are of two sorts--those which are more or less left to go to seed, and those nurtured by eco-types who try to garden in an environmentally sound way.  Train tracks near by also are a corridor untouched by chemicals (for the moment, if there's an accident all bets are off, though.)  And I know of at least three places where people keep bees not far away.

So when it appeared that the blossoms on our trees produced no fruit, or so few that the squirrels have already disappeared them, I literally shivered.  However, it looks like things around here have not evolved into the worse case scenario.  The bees are out in force in our garden too.  If only they'd been more successful last May when the pears were in bloom.