What's blooming, when, and whether it's worth anything — for south-central
Pennsylvania, roughly the Harrisburg area and USDA zone 6b.
Plant
J F M A M J J A S O N D
Gives
Notes
The shape of the year here
🌳
The spring flow — mid-May to mid-June
Black locust and tulip poplar, back to back. This is the big one and it is
short — locust can be over in ten days, and a cold snap or a hard rain during bloom can
cost you the whole thing. Supers need to be on before it starts, not during.
🥀
The dearth — mid-July through August
Nothing much coming in and a colony at peak population eating through stores.
This is when robbing starts, when weak hives get torn apart, and when you reduce entrances
and stop leaving supers sitting around open.
🌻
The fall flow — late August to early October
Goldenrod and Japanese knotweed. Dark, strong-tasting honey that most people
leave on the hive as winter stores rather than harvest. It smells like dirty socks in the
yard while it's coming in — that's normal, and it means things are going well.
Your yard is not this chart. Bloom dates swing two weeks either way with the season, and
what's actually within flying range of your hives matters more than what grows in the county.
A hive surrounded by soybeans has a different year than one at the edge of woods with locust in
it. The most useful thing you can do is keep your own notes for two or three seasons — a hive
scale, or even just a date written down when the locust opens, beats any published calendar.