The delicious world of pears

Jumping into the delicious world of Pears this amazing image caught my eye and I found myself contacting TopFruit who manage this pear brand, to find out more about the Cape Fire™ pear – a high colour attractive mutation of the Forelle Pear. 

“We didn’t have a home discovered mutation in pears until The Cape Fire™ pear”.

Owned by Stefan du Plessis of Elandsriver Boerdery, this pear is unique in that generally in fruit for South Africans, new varieties are not often discovered here, but rather come from other parts of the world.  And especially with regards to pears.

Liza Matthews, Marketing Manager of TopFruit says “we didn’t have a home discovered mutation in pears until The Cape Fire™ pear” which she mentioned “is currently rolling out to the rest of the world as we find partners interested in growing this variety”. 

What do honey bees have to say about pears

They are great pollen sources for them, while lowish on the nectar side. Beeplant value sits at N1 P2-4!  Check out the table below for more detail on those values and what they mean.

Interestingly they are to be managed in pollination to address honey bees flying off after an initial day of visiting, to find other nectar sources aside of the pear orchard that are more attractive to them.  One community in Australia, Bee Aware, suggests that the obvious answer is to increase hive numbers, however we found that their thoughts on using multiple hive introductions seemed best for bees and pears. 

“On the first day hives are introduced to pear orchards, the bees will probably forage on the pear flowers, as they have not yet found the more attractive flowers nearby. When they find the other flowers, they will probably desert the crop. It can therefore be useful to introduce the colonies in two or more introductions, with one or two days between introductions. The bees from the hives introduced in the later introductions will replace the bees from the earlier introductions that have deserted the crop, until they too find the flowers outside the orchard.”  Everyone wins.