The books / Planting for Bees / chapter 3 of 21
Where the year sags
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- A quarter hectare in a circle of 1,260
- Reading a bloom window
- Where the year sags
- The gap is worth more than the peak
- Nectar plants and pollen plants
- Willow, the first pollen
- Phacelia, six weeks from seed
- Borage
- Sowing for a date
- A strip sown too late
- White clover in the grass
- A meadow takes two years
- Lavender is for the bees, not the jar
- Heather, the gap's own honey
- Fruit trees and the years before blossom
- A lime tree for the next keeper
- Black locust
- Ivy on the fence
- Nothing to water, nothing dies
- What a planting can name on the jar
- Siting the hive matters more
The year's nectar has a shape:
- The spring build-up runs from about mid-March into early May and goes into brood.
- The main flow follows from mid-May into late June or early July, four to six weeks of surplus.
- In some places a June gap of one to three weeks falls in the middle of it.
Then comes the long one. The summer dearth runs from mid-July through August, four to eight weeks, the lowest nectar of the active season, before a lighter autumn flow and ivy at the end. The June gap is short enough for a strong colony to ride out. The summer dearth is not.
In this game the gap is read from the wild flow itself, and on this farm it is the August gap, from Jul 31 to Sep 2.