Looks like our flow is about to end. Heat this week in the upper 90's will burn down the remaining vetch and clover. It's usually gone before now. The first round of mesquite has just about ended. They may or may not bloom a second time. Now it will be horsemint, blanket flower, and odds and ends. Nothing that will make a surplus unless you are on a crop like cotton. The bees will slowly fill drawn comb this time of year but they won't draw out new comb unless it's in the brood nest. Whatever is capped in two weeks will get pulled and extracted. I'll put the supers back on and hope the soybeans produce a crop in the next month or two.
North Texas flow is slowing down
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Still a lot of indian blanket blooming here, but definitely on the backside of the curve.i noticed a few horsemint flowers last weekend but the bulk is yet to come.. Local farmer has 200 acres of sunflowers that are starting to bloom. There is cotton , but they are all going to a nectarless variety locally.. A 2nd generation beekeeper that sells honey in Canton told me he hasn't seen a cotton flow here since the late 60s- fwiw..
The mesquites have barely bloomed here so far. Kinda spotty, which is cool because the Indian Blanket bloom is great but about over. I expect a big mesquite bloom very soon. I believe the mesquites east of the Trinity River don't bloom as well as the kind to the west of.
I haven't done much research on Sunflowers. But there is a farmer here that has planted 10's of thousands of acres of it.
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I've done a little reading on the sunflowers and it seems a mixed bag.. I'm just glad its there to help give them something to eat for the time being .
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I checked many mesquite trees over the weekend and found a lot of them have both immature seed pods and immature flower panicles.. That second bloom is right around the corner.
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Ross:
I see that your area had a lot of rain over the weekend. That should make another flow.
Lazy
I see that your area had a lot of rain over the weekend. That should make another flow.
Lazy
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I'm very disappointed that my bees didn't seem to produce much honey at all (like 10 pounds total from 5 hives) from the 4 acres of crimson clover and 2 acres of yellow sweet clover I planted last fall. I'm on the border of Lamar and Red River counties. I went out there today, and all 6 acres are now covered in yellow coneflower / black eyed susan. But I looked and looked and did not see one single bee on any of them. What in the heck do they eat?
Dave, I just extracted 25 gallons from about 10 hives. My hives are on the north Sulphur about 10 miles south of Paris. My honey this year was a mix of vetch, clover, and wild flowers, a bit darker that some previous years when I had more vetch.
I wasn't expecting to get much this year, as I have been sick and not able to tend to the hives like they need. But, I took a peek today and they filled out two more medium supers. It looks like I will have at least 3 full supers to extract when I can in a couple of weeks.
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