Bee Forage & Nectar Flow Calendar
Pick your location and see your beekeeping year: when the flow is on and supers go on, when the summer dearth hits and when the fall flow builds winter stores, plus every forage plant behind it, invasives included.
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Your Forage Calendar
Enter your ZIP or pick your state to see what blooms for your bees.
Why a forage calendar matters
A colony's year is shaped by what blooms around it. The spring build-up rides the first tree and bramble flows; the honey crop comes off a handful of major nectar sources over a few short weeks; and the mid-summer dearth is when stores get eaten and robbing starts. Knowing the order things bloom in your region tells you when to add supers, when to stop feeding, when to watch for swarming and when to close the hives up and leave them alone.
How to read the calendar
Each row is a forage plant, with its typical bloom months shaded. Bold rows with the darker bars are the major nectar flows, the plants that actually make surplus honey. The Major flow strip at the top collapses all of that into one line: where it is lit, a surplus source is blooming somewhere in the region; where it is gray, you are likely in a gap or the dearth. The colored dot by each name marks native, introduced or invasive.
The bar shade is how strong a nectar source the plant is for honey bees, light for a minor one, darker for a heavy yielder. Tap any plant to see that rating in words along with its pollen value. "None" means a known non-source, like a pollen-only flower that makes no nectar. "Not rated yet" means a confirmed bee plant we have not found a cited nectar or pollen rating for, so we leave it blank rather than guess.
Where this data comes from
Nothing here is AI-generated. Every plant traces to a real source you can see: the plant lists come from the Xerces Society's regional pollinator guides, filtered to the species honey bees actually visit using the GloBI dataset of nearly a million bee-plant records, with a few major honey flows the native-plant guides leave out (black locust, tulip poplar, sourwood) plus the introduced and invasive honey plants (the clovers, knotweed) added from beekeeping references and marked as estimates. Each region lists its sources under the calendar, and tapping any plant shows its own.
Bloom timing is still regional and typical, never exact. Latitude, elevation and the year's weather all move it, so treat this as a planning tool, not a substitute for watching your own hives and your own hedgerows. Spot something missing or wrong for your area? Tell us and we will check it against the sources and add it.
Forage calendar by state
Frequently Asked Questions
How accurate is a bee forage calendar?
It shows typical bloom timing for your region, not a day-by-day forecast. Real bloom shifts a week or two with latitude, elevation and each season's weather, so treat it as a planning guide: it tells you the order things bloom and where the summer dearth falls, which is what matters for supering and feeding decisions.
Where does the plant list come from?
The plants are drawn from the Xerces Society regional pollinator plant guides and filtered to species with honey bees on record visiting them in the Global Biotic Interactions (GloBI) dataset of nearly a million bee-plant records, then cross-checked against university extension bee-plant guides (UF/IFAS, Penn State, Ohio State, UC Davis, the University of Minnesota Bee Lab and other land-grant programs). A few major honey flows the native-plant guides omit, like black locust, tulip poplar and sourwood, are added from beekeeping references and marked as estimates, along with the introduced and invasive honey plants (the clovers, knotweed, Himalayan balsam) those native-plant guides leave out.
What is the dearth?
The dearth is a stretch with little nectar coming in, usually mid to late summer in much of the country after the spring flows finish and before goldenrod and aster start. The "Major flow" strip at the top of the calendar shows it as a gap. That is when colonies can start eating their stores and when robbing risk climbs.
Why do some plants have no nectar or pollen rating?
Bloom timing comes straight from the source guides, but a honey-bee-specific value rating does not exist in a clean public dataset, so rather than invent numbers, most plants show timing only for now. The value column is being filled in region by region.