What? Heather? In Campbeltown?
I thought I’d add a new panel to help people understand what’s coming and going through the seasons.
Firstly, for those new to Apiary Forecast (and that will be most of you), we don’t guess what might be around your apiaries. We use official plant survey data.
That said, we are developing rapidly and one of the things that changes is how we display that data.
We still have the “list” panel of local forage. But that was a bit too static for me and while it is useful, I thought a better way to display forage might be to create a timeline view. So what better way than to display the seasonal calendar, compare it with forage development based on Hopkin’s phenology principles, and display a sample of extracted Plant Atlas data for your location. Cool, eh?
Now, bear in mind that all forage data is now being taken from Plant Atlas and then filtered through our proprietary Bee Bible. This is so you don’t get flora listed that isn’t bee forage. The forage shown is actual surveyed forage within range of your set location.
A note on how the forage display works: the model is looking at many individual plant taxa, but there simply is not enough space to show everything species by species. To keep the forecast readable, related plants are grouped into public categories.
That’s why you might see something like “Gorse, broom and moorland/heath flowers”. It may be shown because one or more species within that group are locally supported and seasonally relevant. It is not an error, and it does not mean every plant in the group is present or flowering at the same strength.
Some major or very recognisable forage plants may also be shown individually, such as Common gorse, broom, bramble, lime or heather. These are surfaced separately where the evidence supports them because they can be important, high-volume or easily recognised by beekeepers.
This screenshot is taken from my location so your forage may vary. One thing that surprised me was the Bell Heather. I didn’t realise we had that around here, so I did a quick internal database search and we actually do. It’s just hidden away on the heath up the Ben and it’s a relatively small survey sample, especially compared to other parts of Scotland.
You learn something new every day.
To help you, if you are using a settlement location you need to know that’s where your apiary should be as the system works on a location basis. Consider setting up a private apiary location where it actually is (or at least close to) for the best results. Both for weather and forage.
I hope you find this useful, I think it’s a great learning idea and it’ll be fascinating to watch it change as the seasons progress. And no, I don’t think I’ll be selling any heather honey.