I agree with Roland 100%, when I first started with bees in Mass. during the golden rod flow i got the smelly sock smell. We had 3 years of drought and I noticed that the 4th year with normal rain, the sock didn't smell. I watched one specific field of golden rod over the years go from being totally yellow to now when I drive by it, it has very little golden rod, yet hasn't been overgrown with trees etc.
When I moved to n.y. was amazed the first year, I was back in golden rod heaven. I help another beek pull his honey, his best yard over the last 10 years has become his worst. We were discussing it after pulling honey and driving away from the yard, I said look at the fields, 10 years ago they were all goldenrod when I moved here, now the napp weed has taken over all the fields around here(not the same problem in Mass. as the areas I watch still don't have napp weed). Now napp weed makes a fine honey, but from what I can see golden rod makes alot more honey per acre and the napp weed slows down blooming so you pull most of it and with little or no golden rod the hives end up lighter. I have adjusted my pulling of honey(even though my buddy says I'm crazy) to the 1st of sept when the golden rod is just really starting to produce and my hives go into winter heavy, costs me honey production. Now when I first moved up here, none of the beeks I know had feeders, now more of them are making and using them.
The other thing that is changing up here is what was normally the white clover time for a honey flow seems to be drying up. I have three yards that 3 years ago started producing a brownish honey after bass wood honey was pulled but b/4 chineese bambo comes in, my buddy is 76 and had never seen it b/4, gave some to our resident tast tester and he can't identify it, now there hasn't been any obvious changes in the crops in the area, so we assume that they are working something that was always there but not what they prefered to work, so what is it? where did the prefered weed go? this area also is deficient in golden rod bloom and these three yards need to be fed each year.
Another beek on another forum that normally is very observant has stated over many times, the state he is in 30 years ago got a golden rod flow every year, now he is lucky to get one once in 10 years. What is causing it?? good question. things they are always changing, new weeds, lots of my golden rod has turned into corn when the price of milk went up, all the WHIPS land I spent time finding and getting locations on is now being farmed, my buddy has started to shrink his yards down to smaller yards like I have because of the changes, I watch alot of the commercial yards around and they aren't cutting down the # of hives per location so I would expect there lb's per hive is going down while they are in N.Y.