Quote Originally Posted by Thymallus View Post
North Yorks Moors western side is producing lots of nectar. Most hives have filled 3 or four supers (not fully capped) and may need more. Although the recent rain and cooler weather may slow them down a bit.
Intriguingly it's a bit checkerboard in places. Full out in some areas and just coming out in others. It may (or may not) be an extended season. Possibly due to whether the heather was over underlying deep wet "peat" or smaller distance to sub rock.
But it's not exceptional, just the norm for this area.
You are very very lucky, but then Yoprkshire has been 5C or more warmer than our areas over the last fortnight. Have some Yorks. friends reporting a very poor heather harvest, but then they left the bees gathering blossom and missed the first fortnight of the heather.

Bees on the moors in July have done well...some places VERY well. One or two sites will average 50Kg. 25Kg more normally. Bell yielded in only about half of the normal areas, but the ling started by mid July and helped a lot.

Bees put up in August have done very little indeed, the weather is shot, and the moors now mostly brown. Its pretty well over in most of our areas. About 20% of our apiaries have very little indeed, which will drag the overall average on heather well down from 25Kg. (Long term (35yr ave.) is 21.4...so not going to be a BAD heather year). The bees have known this for a long time and the rate of laying even in nucs tailed off around 3 weeks back and they are getting very dour about further expansion.

Drones are mostly out, wasps are savaging the mating boxes and smaller nucs, balsam doing zilch apart from a few white bees coming in. Paying for the big heat earlier. Hurts the later flowers.