As we’re still in open beta, I have been gathering your feedback and putting improvements into action.
Just to keep you up to speed, one thing that did get mentioned is the tail end of flowering for some plants. It’s approaching that time of year and I’m looking forward to any feedback on this.
The data used is obtained from Plant Atlas 2020, and while that is the most accurate source of information, nothing beats local observation. However, there are three main caveats to that:
- Many items most visible to you in Forage Outlook are grouped. This means items like Gorse, broom etc.contain many species, but they are grouped either because of terrain or forage patterns. The reason I do this is straightforward, it’s to make sure a reasonable list is visible and you don’t have to fight with a list of hundreds of plants.
- The result of that is you may see “gorse and this and that” (or similar) pop up as available when you think it isn’t. It’s worth exploring the group by clicking on it and it will tell you exactly what’s in that group, and clicking the plant atlas link will take you directly to the entry in the Plant Atlas database where you can see for yourself the flowering windows as well as the survey results in your location.
- The other caveat is that you have a 5 mile radius, this is the equivalent to 78.5 square miles. Many plants surveyed are available in patches. This is something to bear in mind if you see an item listed that you might not personally be aware of, that item may be in range around you anyway.
Going back to local observation, a member pointed out that a certain species had ceased flowering in their area. And that’s good, that’s local observation and it helped me understand that for one or two groups the latitude calculation wasn’t quite accurate. That has since been corrected!
There’s a feedback form on every forecast, so if you do spot something awry please do let me know. I will investigate and come back to you with a result or an improvement.
In other news, I have made another improvement to Forage Outlook.
Previously, a lot of the calculations were reduced to one score, the Forage Intake. I’ve scrapped it, and the reasoning was that it was too reductive. It gave you a score but so what? What did that score actually mean? Big means good, small means bad, right?
Initially I was happy with it because some indicator about the day was really the whole point, but then I had the idea that it would be better using the existing pollen and nectar scores and to bring them front and centre. Making the protein and carbohydrate score more prominent gives you better information for better beekeeping decisions.
Et voilà!
You now have an at a glance score for forecast pollen and nectar collection. The side effect is that Trends will eventually need to catch up with these separated scores but it won’t take long.
I do hope that you enjoy these improvements, and as we move into autumn you find them useful.
Things will obviously quieten down as we approach winter but before you know it spring will be upon us and we’l be anxiously checking temperatures and the weather once again!