When we saw footage of the fires there recently, I thought it looked like Australia with all the eucalypts. I am told they may have been a problem as they are so flammable with all the oil in them. Blue Gums are a great honey bee tree and yes, the flowers are creamy white - the Tasmanian floral emblem. The seed capsule is large and warty and smells strongly of the oil, especially when crushed. According the the RIRDC field guide, the Tasmanian Blue Gum yields between 5-60kg honey per hive and pollen rating 1-5 (5 is top). The only red flowers I know of on gums here are those from the mainland planted in gardens ornamentally but are only 3 or 4 metres high…so not sure what you have…
Here is a photo of a Blue Gum leaf.
Edit - just had a look on google maps around the San Diego zoo area. You’ve got more gum trees than we have! I don’t know what they are, but I don’t think what I saw were blue gums.
Well the pollen that they are bringing back is white, so maybe it’s Blue gum trees that they found. Just realized that a few streets down there’s a row of them…
Hi Bruce - here, the years between flowering is 1 to 12. The skilful old-time beekeepers can look at a eucalypt and know if it will flower, so they can then predict where to move their hives.
Hi Bruce,
I’ve followed your flow journey a bit. It’s just stunning how often you were able to harvest on your rooftop.
Did you keep records on how many kg you got so far? Amazing…
So far I’ve only harvested the one frame from this hive, but I never really measured the exact amount. Unless you count the 8 frames of comb honey I took in the spring of last year…It would have been more if the hive didn’t swarm. So this year I’ll keep better track of the exact amount.
That’s interesting. Perhaps I thought you had more harvests because I saw your pics and I assumed you harvested every time.
Nonetheless, it’s great that you can have a hive on an apartment roof in LA.
I’ve never been there and imagine you are in a big city.
My hive swarmed yesterday, but the bees went back to the hive, so I tore into it and did some preventative measures, removed a full frame of honey in the brood chamber and took out a section of drone comb. Left the honey outside the hive for them to recover since the Flow frames I drained are already half filled and the medium super that was added is 1/4 filled. There must have been a brood explosion since this hive was packed and I might have to resort to the shake method. I did see new eggs and larva, but as usual that queen is a hider and have yet to ever spot her. There was a single queen cell that was uncapped, but since I didn’t see the queen I left it alone just in case.
Hi Dan, I took some photos. Hopefully you, @busso or one of our other resident geniuses will be able to identify them. One photo is just of the flowers, the other is of leaves on a non-flowering branch of the same tree.
Hi Dawn, what lovely long leaves, although strangely shorter near the flowers.
I wish I knew more about gums, but know they can be difficult to distinguish from one another. I’m scratching my head and will try to come up with something.
How long would you guesstimate those longer leaves to be? How tall approximately are the trees?
The long leaves are 15 to 20cm approx. The trees are very tall - at least 25 meters. The fruits are round and dark, almost black, about 7-8mm diameter.
Hi Dawn, they’ll give your bees a good boost going out of winter. I think that it’s the abundance of blue gums that flower around my way during winter that’s responsible for late winter - early spring swarms.
I previously posted that they might have been the Red Ironbark - initially because I had found this and then google earthed for a bit around San Diego and thought they looked similar, but the colour of the leaves and stems do not look right, now I compare them to the leucoxylon.
