field note
A honeybee on white clover
One frame, one bee, one flower. The reason the meadow at our hillside stays unmown — and why the walnut block has the pollinator population it does.
· Sameer Jain · 1 min read
A friend with a steadier hand than ours took this photograph. The bee was on the clover for less than a second.
The walnut tree needs pollinators. Walnut is wind-pollinated in principle, but the catkin-to-flower timing is fragile in years of low chill or early bud-break; insect activity around the orchard is what turns "a good year for catkins" into "a good year for nuts". So we count bees the way other people count tomatoes.
On the hottest day of last summer Pawan walked the meadow and counted seventeen honeybees in ten square metres. We have not seen a number like that on any commercial farm we have visited in the valley. The reason is exactly as simple as it sounds.
We do not spray. Not for aphids, not for blight, not for anything. The bee on the clover is what we get back.