As long as we have kept bees on Vancouver Island we have always anxiously anticipated the blackberry bloom because we are told they are the main flow.  Over our first four years with bees, we have never seen the bees make honey on the blackberry flow, and rarely have we seen the bees working a blackberry flower.  It’s a bit different this year, we now see lots of honeybees working the blackberry flowers.  Are they going to make honey?  So far the scale hive says no, it has been losing weight as the berries bloom.  I was ready to give up on them, but while taking the photo above I realized that even though the berries appear from a distance to be in full bloom, in reality less than a quarter of the flowers are open. Today the scale hive stopped losing weight after a week of steady drops.  Maybe there is still a chance the bees will make more honey on the blackberry bloom. We can only hope.