Does your bee season have a dearth period and if so , when?

[efmesch]

Spring is approaching.  Most of us have yet to see our bees getting to work seriously,collecting this year's crop. But we think of it with hope for the future and experience from the past.
When is the approximate active season for bees in your neighborhood and what are the months when the honey flows and what months, if any, are "dry"?
To make comparing answers easier, I suggest writing the letters of the abbreviation for months of the active season and capitalizing the months when nectar usually flows.
Like this rough assessment for my neighborhood:

feb MAR APR may jun JULY aug SEP oct

[apisbees]

Yes a long one last year from the first week in July of 2017 to what looks like April 1st of 2018 as we still have snow on the ground and it doesn't look like it will warm up till the first week in April. It is a good question to ask Efmesch, the second question to go along with this is how do you manage your colonies to still be able to collect a honey crop while working around these seasonal dearths?
but seriously my honey crop ends sometime in the first part of July when the temps reach 100 deg F and with no precipitation the flow stops for the year. In most years the flows start in the middle of February but not this year.

[Perry]

August is the dearth month around here for the most part, the time between clover and goldenrod.

[Lburou]

We live in North Central Texas, a part of the Cross Timbers Region of the central USA.  The region represents a boundary between the forests of eastern North America and the southern Great Plains.

Weather here is variable from year to year.  Because of topography and established weather patterns, it is very dry to the West and very wet to the East of us, but that wet/dry line moves East or West as those established weather patterns vacillate.  Some years here are dry, (producing a dearth), and some years are wet, (potentially producing a bumper crop of honey if the timing of rain is good).

So my answer to Ef's question is we have a dearth sometimes and sometimes not.  When it occurs, it is usually mid summer (July/August).  We hope for a good fall honey flow and it appears if weather (rain) permits.  The problem is that here in Texas we can go six months without a drop of rain and get 4 or 9 inches of rain overnight.  We average 32 inches of rain each year, but it may fall on six days of the year leaving a lot of dry weather in between the rains.  When I get it figured out, I'll let you know. 

P.S.  We feed when necessary, but usually let the bees have their honey through the dearth.

[Jen]

Our dearth is usually late July and August, sometimes some of September. And it's usually complicated by forest fire season, lots of smoke.

[Bakersdozen]

In a perfect world, we would place our colonies in an area that provided non-stop forage.
That being said, we all have lapses in our bee food supply and it is very localized.  Mine is JULY 1 - mid-AUGUST or first SEPTEMBER.

[riverbee]

ef, nectar, pollen or both? 

my bees start collecting pollen long before nectar sources are available, dandelion bloom begins either late april or early may. the last blooms of the season for me, are goldenrod and asters. last year these were prolific, lasting until early october. we have also done plantings/restoration for pollinators, varied, so something is typically available for the bees.

dearths really for me are so varied and no month is always the same. every year is different. typically there is always something blooming in my river valley.

[Barbarian]

In my area, there can be a spring flow but not reliable for a crop. If the spring weather turns bad the bees can need to be fed.
We have a 'gap' in June when the spring flowers have finished and the summer ones haven't started. A collected May can starve if not checked.
The summer flow starts in July and can continue into October if the weather is mild.