Almost all apples and crab apples can pollinate each other, so as long as you have different kinds, I wouldn't worry about it. Crabapples are particularly good pollinators because they bloom for a long time. More importantly, what kinds are you planting exactly? When you say you've started some trees, do you mean from seed? Apple seedlings are very variable. They'll resemble their parents only as much as, say, we resemble our own parents. And if you don't know who the father (pollen parent) was, it's even harder to predict what the offspring will be like. What if that tasty light red apple of yours was pollinated by a tiny sour crabapple? If I were you, I'd make sure I knew exactly what I was planting, and buy some grafted trees. Then again, it can be fun to be surprised, so if you like surprises, enjoy.

I have had very good luck just storing the filled blocks in a screen porch. I am in zone 7A with a last frost date of April 15-30. I shoot to have the bee blocks relined and hung plus the cocoons in the hatchery box about now. The daffodils are blooming here and the forsythia and cherry trees are also in bloom. My blocks are the bored hole in wood block type and use rolled parchment paper tubes. Plastic does not seem to be as good as wood in this case, but I started and have had good success wood so, I have never used a plastic block. I started with a single 24 hole bee block in 2008 and now have blocks totaling 106 tubes. When filled, I find 8-10 cocoons per tube. I do have some problem with parasitic wasps burrowing into some tubes, but no mold or mite problems. Search on my screen name and you will find links to image albums of my blocks. The building details came from a link to an article by Randy Person.

joeinmo, I hear ya. I don't use roundup and avoid any plants labelled with Neotics. I've only seen a couple of honey bees this year but I've seen lots of bumblebees and/or their lookalikes. They chew threw a lot of my salvia flowers to get the nectar instead of pollinating them but that's ok with me. I think there's enough to go around. Do you have any favorite honey bee plants? I just got some butterfly weed for the Monarchs. This will be my first attempt at growing my own apples. A few of the leaves have spots but I think I'm just going to leave them be and see how they do next season. If I see any problems, I've read about copper sulfate as a natural solution. I'm sure my apple trees will be a slow and bumpy but interesting learning experience. Thanks!

I went to Orange Pippins web site. If you look at the Gala page they'll link to a list of pollination partners. On the list is Fuji, Honeycrisp, Jonalicious, Jonathan. I'm only listing those as they have a rep for good tasting apples. Also on that list is Enterprise which I mention for disease resistance. It should be noted that Honeycrisp is considered a hard apple to grow and is intended for northern orchards. Zone 6 is about as far south as you should consider growing it. If you want to do fruit tree research there's a USDA page which lists thousands of apples, gives a picture, and in many cases a "Detailed" description. At this time of year you must check the include unavailable check box or you won't get anything. When I went to get the link I went there and typed in a search for "malus" and got 6540 varieties. Something I've noticed is that say you want a McIntosh apple with good scab resistance. That site will list many McIntosh apples and in the case of that apple will show a wide range of scab resistance amongst the McIntosh apple sports. Speaking of Mcintosh if you try MacIntosh, you'll get nothing. I have done a search for text and it seems to scan the varieties like a data base would.