📈 Forecasting in Beekeeping

About this simulation

Experienced beekeepers rarely react to what the hive is doing today — they plan ahead using historical flow records and the phenology of local forage: when dandelion, clover and lime typically bloom relative to accumulated spring warmth and rainfall. This scene models three overlapping bloom curves as a field of flowers and a 3D forecast chart, so you can see how shifting the season's conditions moves the predicted honey flow — and how the noisy "actual" data a beekeeper records on scale-hives compares to the smooth forecast curve.

How it works

• Each forage species has a bloom peak day and width, modelled as a bell curve — the classic phenology approach to predicting flowering windows.
• Spring warmth shifts all bloom peaks earlier or later, echoing how growing-degree-day accumulation drives real flowering dates.
• Rainfall scales nectar secretion — too little and blooms produce less nectar even while flowering on schedule.
• The blue line is the model's forecast honey flow across the season; the dotted line is simulated "actual" scale-hive data with realistic day-to-day noise.
• The hive's honey level fills as the cumulative forecast integrates flow across the days you've scrubbed through.

Controls

• Day of year — scrub the season from January to December.
• Spring warmth — shifts bloom phenology earlier (warm) or later (cold), in days.
• Rainfall — scales nectar secretion strength for all sources.
• Highlight source — isolate one forage species in the flower field and chart.
• ▶ Play season — animates the day forward automatically. Drag to rotate, scroll to zoom.

Did you know?

UK beekeepers often track "June gap" — a dip between the spring dandelion/oilseed flow and the summer clover/lime flow — precisely because forecasting the gap lets them decide whether to feed a colony or move it to new forage in time.