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we have seen the trail off of our main flow with not much foraging going on for the past week or two, and above average rainfall for same said two weeks.

so after a relative 'dearth' foraging has picked up in earnest here today; ton's of light yellow pollen and many bees per second coming in bloated with nectar, not to mention the roar of the house bees processing that nectar that can easily be heard 15 yards away.

i'm not sure what they are working. my first guess is summer jasmine.

 

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interesting dan. i have a lot of sumac on my property, it's actually pretty invasive and i have to kill of some of it. there are two or three varieties and their bloom is staggered. i've not seen any pollen gathered from it but it appears to offer up some of the dark nectar like what you are seeing.

we have a few sourwood trees scattered around the woods here and they have not bloomed yet.

i also harvested my first batch last weekend, and like with you, there was absolutely no interest in the open and spilled honey out in the bee yard. so yes, still enough of a flow here to where robbing isn't worth it, yet.

i'm guessing (hoping) the bees here will use this secondary flow to cap off the rest of the frames in the honey supers. i've got a bunch this year.

 

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awesome. the pollen coming in at this time is a bright whiteish yellow, it reminds me of lemon maringue. i'll take another look at what the bees are doing on the sumac here.

i've noticed that the first batches here are lighter, and they seem to get progressively darker as the season roles on. i like the darker stuff better myself.