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Welcome to your Bountiful Weekly Almond Market Update.
It's been so nice being in the valley as we're reaching full bloom. I'm looking forward to the Bountiful Bloom update this Friday. You can expect photos from the field! And if you want to be sure you're subscribed to receive bloom updates, you can subscribe here. Now on to the usual programming.
This week we're covering:
- Weather impacts during bloom and do low bee flight hours = low yield?
Keep reading for this week's latest or sign in to the Bountiful platform to access your Agriculture, Market, and Community data-driven insights.
🌸🐝 Weather impacts during bloom and how do bee flight hours and yield relate?
Well, 2020 is California's record-breaking average yield year at a whopping 2,501 lbs per acre.
And Bee flight hours Feb 1 - Feb 22 2020 in all regions were less than 2022 bee flight hours.
2011 was the second record-breaking average yield for California almonds, at 2,383 lbs per acre. Bee flight hours that year were also low. There is an excellent article, Almond Pollination Math, that covers 2011 bee flight hours due to weather.
All this to say, while bee flight hours are a good indicator to track, by themselves, they aren't that informative on whether or not our 2023 yield outcome will be high or low. Looking at the relationship of bee flight hours, bloom length, overlap period, and precipitation all play a symbiotic and complex role in determining yield potential during bloom. And it's one of the reasons why using machine learning to forecast early yield distributions works so well!
We'll continue to watch almond bloom as we prepare to release our first yield forecasts to our Farm and Industry subscribers in April.
🙌 Thank you for sending in your bloom submissions to Bountiful Bloom! Keep em' coming and we'll report on the data received weekly to give you an industry wide update on how bloom is developing across the state.
Our second bloom report we'll be released this Friday. We'll give you a more of in-depth breakdown on bloom submissions received.
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