To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Evans
Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 16:13:46 -0500
Lucky, Last one of the Evans you sent me bloomed, it's near a carpenter ant
nest and the ants picked the center out of every blossom. I tried things to
keep them from being able to climb the trunk, but nothing worked. I'm
hoping the other one will bloom this year, no ant nest near it. The large
nest we have observed for years now was taken over by slaver ants, which
spent late summer and the winter there, then moved on leaving what we
thought was a dead colony. But this year the carpenter ants are at work
again in the same spot. I guess the slavers didn't kill the queen. Alas, I
am sorry to say that humans didn't invent slavery. At the beginning many of
the carpenter ants fled, but the slavers dragged them back and set them to
work. Donna