Know when your flow is coming
Nectarcast works out when each nectar flow at your apiary is likely to start, so supers go on in time and you are not guessing from last year's diary.
Nobody near here has shared a calibrated flow yet, so this is the weather picture only — how this season compares with the 16 before it. That needs no observations from anyone, and names no place finer than the cell above.
The calendar is the wrong clock
Plants do not run on dates. They run on accumulated warmth, and warmth does not arrive on schedule — at the apiary below, the same amount of it turned up thirty days apart in the warmest and coolest of sixteen seasons. A diary of past dates cannot tell you which kind of year you are having.
Growing degree days are that warmth, counted. Each day above about 10 °C adds to a running total for the season; a cold week adds almost nothing, a hot one adds a lot. The useful part is that a given flow starts at roughly the same total every year, even when the date moves by a month. Find that number once and it keeps working.
What you get
Every forecast is a range, and it narrows as the season goes on and the weather stops being a guess. A single confident date would be a lie.
Thresholds are fitted from what you logged at that apiary, with its own altitude and sixteen years of its own weather. A ridge and a valley are not the same site.
A new site borrows thresholds beekeepers nearby have calibrated, so it forecasts something before you have logged a season of your own.
Each flow you log sharpens the numbers. Nothing is fitted from anyone else's observations — your forecast is built from yours.
How it works
- Add your apiary. A name and a position. Sixteen seasons of weather for that exact spot are fetched for you, along with its altitude.
- Log what you see. “Blackberry started today.” Backdating is expected — flows get noticed in gloves and written up that evening.
- Watch the window. Each sighting pins the threshold down further, and next season's forecast tightens around it.
Your sites are private. Their names, coordinates and observations are visible only to you and to people you invite, and are never shared with anyone else. New sites do join the shared pool, which contributes the fitted thresholds and an area about 25 km across — anonymously, never a name, an exact position or a raw observation. That is what lets a new site forecast anything at all. You can turn it off per site, at any time.
Sign in and add your first apiary →
Look at another area
The area above is guessed from your connection, which is often out by a long way. Search for your town to correct it.
A capital is a starting point, not your area: a cell is about 25 km across, so if you are an hour out of town, search for your own town instead.