The books / Forage and the Nectar Flow / chapter 9 of 21
The gap in the middle of the year
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
There are two lulls in the year and they are not the same thing.
The first is the June gap: one to three weeks in early to mid June, between the spring bloom ending and the summer flow starting, well documented in Britain and present in parts of North America, though not everywhere. It is short, and a strong colony can eat into its own stores while it lasts.
The second is the summer dearth, mid-July through August, four to eight weeks, the lowest nectar availability of the active season. That one is long enough to matter: robbing risk peaks in it, wet supers left standing draw a crowd, and a colony given no help can go backwards for a month.