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🗺️ Forage Assessment and Mapping for Beekeepers

A practical framework for surveying, mapping and scoring the nectar and pollen resources within flight range of an apiary, and spotting seasonal forage gaps.

Ecology & Conservation Biology3DModerate60 FPS

A 3D model of the foraging landscape around an apiary: patches of oilseed, orchard, wildflower, bramble and ivy bloom and fade with the calendar while flight-range rings and a live forage score show what a colony can actually reach and use each month.

🔬 What It Demonstrates

Forage value depends on three things at once: what's blooming this month, how far it is from the hive, and how diverse the surrounding land use is. The score and gap-risk readout combine all three the way a surveying beekeeper would when siting or auditing an apiary.

🎮 How to Use

Drag the season slider through the year to watch patches bloom and fade, adjust the flight radius and diversity, then toggle quality weighting and gap-only view to see how each factor moves the forage score.

💡 Did You Know?

The "June gap" — a dip between spring mass-bloom crops finishing and summer wildflowers starting — is one of the most common forage shortfalls UK beekeepers plan supplemental feeding around.

⚙ Under the hood

A 3D landscape survey around an apiary where oilseed, orchard, wildflower, bramble and ivy patches bloom and fade through the calendar, ringed by 1/3/5km flight-range markers, with a live forage score and seasonal gap-risk readout.

bee-forageforage-mappingnectar-sourcesapiary-sitingpollinator-ecologyforage-gap-analysis

3D · Three.js / WebGL renderer · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install