I just released a podcast episode about citrus trees. I’ve been trying to find honey plants in bloom during each month. I’ve been surprisingly consistent since I started this series in July with sweet clover. This is March, there is usually an orange tree or two blooming somewhere in Florida, Texas, Arizona, or California this month, so I created an episode about orange trees.

I’ll start with something that sounds trivial but isn’t. Oranges don’t grow in orchards. They grow in groves. It’s a small linguistic difference, but indicates history, geography, and culture all tangled together.

Say “orchard” in central Florida and you’ll immediately identify yourself as someone who has never driven down a sandy trail between rows of citrus trees with sticky side mirrors and bees bouncing off your windshield.

I know a bit about Florida citrus because I kept bees in the groves there for about 10 years back in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Back then, there were nearly a million acres of citrus.

You could pull off the road almost anywhere and grab an illegal orange or grapefruit for a quick snack. Try that today and you’ll likely be standing in someone’s driveway. The groves are disappearing.

At its peak, Florida produced about 12 million pounds of orange blossom honey each year. Today it’s down to a quarter of that. The acreage has collapsed. Disease, development, and changing economics have taken their toll.

In this episode of the About Bees, Culture, and Curiosity podcast, I look at the death of Florida’s citrus groves. Along the way, we visit the trees, their flowers, orange blossom honey, and beekeeping in the Sunshine State.

I hope you enjoy this blog and the podcast episode – available everywhere you get your podcasts, and at this link.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/march-is-orange-blossom-month/id1760959092?i=1000756871427