Forage and the Nectar Flow
A hive's year is not one long summer of honey. It is a handful of short flows with gaps between them, each one a different plant, opening on its own week and closing again in a fortnight. The whole craft of a good crop is knowing which plant is out, putting the box on before it opens and taking the box off after it closes. The same bees on the same frames then fill them with something that has a name and a price of its own.
- The two-kilometre circle
- Why six kilometres costs more than it brings
- Three and a half kilos of nectar
- What a flow actually is
- Maple, willow and the first dandelions
- Fruit blossom and hawthorn
- The main flow: black locust and clover
- Linden in July
- The gap in the middle of the year
- Goldenrod and the winter stores flow
- Ivy, the last flow
- Oilseed rape, the flow that sets in the comb
- What makes a jar monofloral
- Putting a super on at the start of a flow
- Pulling it at the end
- Reading a capping percentage
- Eighteen point six percent
- Honey that ferments
- Crystallisation is physics, not spoilage
- Creaming by the Dyce method
- A year of varieties and what each is worth