What defines a "flow"?

[Moonshae]

I understand that those of you who live near acres and acres of one particular crop get a lot of necar all at once from that crop...that makes it easy to define a flow. However, I live in suburban NJ, and the only thing around me that covers acres and acres is "lawn". There is a forest and a lake nearby, there are two commercial nurseries, and our main street has a ton of crabapple trees, but other than that, I'm guessing that much of my bees' nectar is going to come in a trickle from spring-fall rather than a whole lot of one thing all at once. Most of the trees in the forest don't flower.

Am I wrong in my assessment? If people keep bees in Manhattan, surely they are in a more restrictive situation than me, but I have a hard time translating what people experience here to what I can expect to experience.

[MrILoveTheAnts]

Here in NJ our most recent flow would be the Dutch Clover which can be found on almost every lawn in the region (country?). Those little white flowers. That's almost done with now so the bees are becoming less picky about what they're going after. Things like Sunflowers, and Purple Cone flowers suddenly seem more appealing and less defined. Not everyone has these plants in their yard so it's not really a flow.

[Moonshae]

That's pretty much what I was thinking. The clover I know the bees like, and I was thinking about seeding it through my entire yard to maximize what they have easy access to, but people scalp their lawns here, and generally, a day or two after those blooms are visible, they're mowed down.

[MrILoveTheAnts]

I can think of at least one person who cuts around the clover when mowing their lawn. It creates a neat patter too and looks better than it sounds.
I'd recommend getting a flower garden and fill it with Catmint, which seems to bloom form spring to fall. Of all the plants in yards around my way, no matter what else is blooming, I can always find a honey bee on the Catmint. However, it might be less or more so depending on what else is flowering. Salvia works just as good but they don't bloom as long.
Lavender seems to really hit a nerve with honey bees but I can never find them in garden stores.
Butterfly Bush, Milkweed if you can find them are great but don't bloom in the fall. Some I think grow wildly in forests here, along with similar plants bees love.
Really bees tend to like plants with lots of tiny, bee manageable flowers on them.
I would place plants with Sunflower-like blooms at a second place. Though I may be wrong. These larger flowers are big and have more nectar and pollen in them but they produce fewer flowers and it's usually only one bee per flower at a time. So smaller flowering plants like Catmint and Salvia have an advantage.

[doak]

Watch the blooms on that clover. When they turn brown, just clip with a weedeater. don't cut the whole plant short. it will put out new growth and bloom again. Does here in the south.
My bit.
doak

[Moonshae]

I have a few butterfly bushes, my bees ignore them. They are going crazy on my basil, and I see several on my echinacea. I also have these "stalky things" that bloom from the top down that the bees seem to like, but there aren't many for them to hit. I have a very small yard, so my plantings will be but a drop in the bucket of what they need.

I will try to clip away the brown clover blooms, that's a good shot to generate more of them.

[doak]

Get you a couple big plant pots and some catnip.
Be, "careful" this stuff will spread like wild fire.
Get some bee balm if you can.
Early in spring they also hit the Red Bud tree good.
doak

[Fannbee]

Remember bees will travel up to 2 to 3 miles for nectar.  Last year, I had cotton planted 7 tenths of a mile from my hives.  I had a second flow from it.

darn fuel prices, the fields are now corn.   

[beekeeperookie]

Bees will go after the pollen on corn, they been after my sweet corn in the garden.

[BBHJ]

Get you a couple big plant pots and some catnip.
Be, "careful" this stuff will spread like wild fire.
Get some bee balm if you can.
Early in spring they also hit the Red Bud tree good.
doak

I never see anyone really talking about the Red Bud trees. We have one pretty big Red Bud tree in our yard and back during the spring bees were all over it for 1 1/2 days. The whole tree was buzzing with thousands of bees. The bummer part about it though was that they weren't "my" bees. This took place like 1 week before we got out first bees. I cant wait until this spring to see this event happen again.    8-)