🐝 Weather-Threshold Decision Framework

About this simulation

UK beekeepers increasingly plan inspections and interventions around live weather data and forage phenology rather than a fixed calendar. This scene turns four weather inputs into three concrete apiary decisions — feed, super, and treat — shown as coloured gauges beside a 3D hive, with forager traffic responding to conditions in real time.

How the thresholds work

• Feed — turns red when temperature is low or forage is scarce and the colony risks running out of stores before flow resumes; amber near the margin; green when stores should hold.
• Super — turns green only when it is warm enough, forage is abundant, and the season sits inside the main nectar flow window; otherwise the box stays closed (red/amber).
• Treat — highlights the varroa treatment window once brood rearing slows in late summer/autumn and temperatures are mild enough for the chosen treatment to work, but before it gets too cold.
• Forager activity — the number of bees leaving the hive scales with temperature and forage, and drops sharply in heavy rain.

Controls

• Temperature — ambient air temperature in °C.
• Weekly rainfall — accumulated rainfall in mm over the past week.
• Forage availability — a 0–100% index of nectar/pollen sources currently in bloom.
• Season — shifts which decisions are even relevant (e.g. supering is meaningless in late winter).
• ↺ Reset view — restores the camera. Drag to rotate, scroll to zoom.

Did you know?

Many experienced UK beekeepers use a rough rule of thumb — no inspections below about 14–15°C — because below that, opening the hive chills the brood faster than the colony can recover, which is exactly the kind of threshold this framework tries to make explicit and repeatable.