What's flowering as forage in your area

  • Thread starter Curly green fingers
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Blackberry.
Blackberry is my guess as well as it started to come in here this week,the pollen charts tend to give you the colour of the pollen on the flower and it sometimes looks a bit different once the bees have collected it.
 
I've been seeing quite a bit of pure white pollen lately and I finally worked out what it is. Arum Lily, noticed a lot of activity around the monster in my garden and sure enough, white pollen.
The rambler, Francis Lester is spectacular this year and covered in bees.
 
Blackberry pollen shouldn't be grey, at least not according to the below chart
It is a green grey. More grey than green.
Trouble is, many of the colour charts (printed and online) are way off the mark when it comes to accuracy, a lot of it is due to slight variations creeping in between proofs and final due to printing methods/the way the colours behave on paper etc.
apparently Kirk was back and for to the printers - checking, rechecking and rejecting before he was satisfied as to what went to print and even then he said some shades were still a little off as there is a big difference between pollen on the flower and what is on the bees' pollen baskets.
But to be honest, some of the charts I've seen bandied around beekeeping circles are worse than poor.
 
Water Hemlock Dropwort
Thanks Neil, I hope it’s not though!
I‘ve looked up how to identify it against other similar looking plants, so will do some careful checking today. It’s all along the river bank and gradually infiltrating into the garden.
 
Download a free app called Seek on you phone it will identify it but I’m 95% sure I’m right.
Bees love it!6B740473-104F-4986-BBD2-4F88FBAE15C0.jpeg
 
From the grey pollen colour it looks like my bees are onto the elderflower.

:D It's been a bumper elderflower year. I've got my second lot 'steeping' in readiness to turn into wine! :laughing-smiley-014
 

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Blackberry is out all over the place now, but still plenty of buds to come so another couple of weeks I reckon.
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Plenty bramble here, but, coming from the north west, I never get used to the reality that in this part of the SE there is an almost total absence of inland water.
 
Bramble is just starting to show here in Sussex but nothing like you have in Kent!
 
Bramble spectacular here, possibly past peak. Lime open but suspect it's too hot for it. Not long until sweet chestnut. Clover flowering in places but they just took a hay cut sadly.

Last year one batch of honey tasted of elderflower so suspect it was part of their forage, have heard it's less preferred.
 

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