I've found myself living in Chico Ca for the past 2 and a 1/2 years. I raise many flowering plants & vines- Mostly passion flowers & 'unusual trees who produce edible fruit' such as cherimoyas, jaboticabas & sapotes.

Often on any given day I have 5 to 10 passion flowers open, which I've found I must hand polinate if I want any fruit. WHy? In the 2.5 years I've been here I've seen les than 5 honey bees.

My sister (not on purpose, they came with the house) has passion vines in her back yard where she lives in Los Angeles. Often when I'm down there I'll go look at her vines- There's bees all over them flying about collecting their pollen... (What must that honey be like I wonder?) Some of the plants I have are clones of those vines..

I wonder why it is that I never see a bee? I've heard of the "africanized" colonies moving north, and also of some disease wiping out hives. The local farmers are complaining of low crop harvests- They grow lots of nut & fruit trees around here, making me think there should be many bees.. But I never see any.

In the future when I "settle down" I might be interested in keeping a small hive. My girlfriend will do almost anything for those 'honey sticks', and some help polinating all those passion flowers sure would be nice.

Anyone have an idea why these neat little insects are so rare around here?