The books / Forage and the Nectar Flow / chapter 15 of 21
Pulling it at the end
All chapters
- 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
The end of a flow is the moment a super is most itself. Every day after it the box takes in whatever is flowering next, and a linden super turns by degrees into a wildflower super with some linden in it. So take the box off when the plant that filled it stops.
Against that stands ripeness: a frame is ready at roughly 80 percent capped, and honey pulled wetter than that will not keep.
The two clocks agree when a dearth follows the flow. Clover and goldenrod finish into an empty fortnight, and the bees seal what is there.
They disagree when one flow runs into the next. Bramble opens across the end of the locust and clover across the linden, so a super left to dry fills instead.
Try this in the game: Take a super off a hive.