The books / Forage and the Nectar Flow / chapter 6 of 21
Fruit blossom and hawthorn
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
By the time the fruit trees are fully out, with hawthorn in the hedges and the first clover underfoot, the calendar reads 0.70, and against a peak of 4.5 kilos a day that is around three kilos of nectar coming through the door.
This is the anchor where the calendar's own note says supers go on. The colony is large now, comb is being drawn, and more arrives each day than the brood nest can use.
It is not yet the main flow, which stands at 1.00 one anchor later. It is the last quiet week before it, which is exactly when a box wants to be on the hive rather than in the shed.