Wild Mustard is on!

[OzBuzz]

The Wild Mustard has really kicked off now in my area! the bees are bringing in lots of pollen and nectar from it! apparently its pollen is better than canola as canola produces short lived brood (apparently). I reckon we should start our own map of what's flowering where and also list members who might have the capacity to 'host' other hobbyists hives if they want to move them around a little

[Cullz]

Great idea to map flowering times for plants.
I'm recording bloom dates in my area also. I bet there's enough data out there, but getting it together might be difficult. No time like now to start.

It might take a bit of technical know-how to make it happen, unless the data is entered onto a google map or similar in a usable format.

So it'd be possible to look at how the flowering timing moves across the continent, and also how it varies yearly and with temperature and rainfall.
It'd be nice if somebody could write software to both display this data visually on a map, and also to display it as a data dump so further statistical trends can be looked at easily.

[philinacoma]

I agree, I've thought about this too. It'ld be nice to do, but getting the data together would be a real dog of a job.

eg. If you took note of what was flowering in your neck of the woods, thats ok for that specific location. On a map you want to show areas, not individual points. That flower could be blooming from just south of you all the way to cape york, but you'ld not know unless you took a drive up there to check. Do you instead say within a 100km radius of this point? We have a few people on the forum in Oz, but no where near enough to really cover the map. In Vic we're not too bad in we have Geoff in the east, Mardak in the west, Pete on the peninsula and a few dotted around the Melb suburbs. Not many in NSW, one in Tas. Qld Has Slicko and others in Brisbane, Westmar in the south west and Lone (come back Lone. Don't give up because of one bad experience! Stick with it) in the far north.

If someone has a good idea of how to define an area based upon only a couple of points, I'ld love to know.

[westmar]

hi
wild mustard on out her.

[Mardak]

Hi there everyone,

there should be flows up this way over the few months as so many of the euc's had budded last year. The recent rains are going to wonders for the moisture content of the trees. A fair bit of gorze is flowering which does wonders in terms of pollen, no nectar though. Some of the Blackwoods are doing premature flowering so the girls are working it. The Lucerne trees are flowering so there is plenty of food after such a cold winter over here. Lost a hive so intend to do a split when the weather warms up a bit.