Creating Forage maps.

[Greengage]

Now that the bees are locked up for the winter, I decided to create a forage map of my locality easier siad than done, First I logged onto this site http://bees.morkland.org/coverage/ now if you click oon the map it creates concentric circles with 1km between circlles. So far so good, Then I logged onto google maps and was hoping to map the local fields with what crops were growing e.g OSR Winter barley, Local bog with heather, etc. By then logging this onto a spread sheet I could record when crops were in flower and where bees were likely to be foraging then I could move the bees nearer locations of good forage, make notes as to when spraying was likley, ect etc.
So far im having difficullty in naming the crops on the map and importing the circles onto the google map. has anyone ever done something like this before.

[Greengage]

Sorry for being a nusiance but found this site https://www.freemaptools.com/radius-around-point.htm. In the box for “Place radius by location name,” enter a any address for the location of your hives, In the “Radius Distance” box, enter 2 miles or 3 km, which I believe from reading books and listening to beekeeppers is distance honey bees will fly to forage. Click the “Draw Radius” button. The forage area of your honey bees will show up on the map right above on the same page. magic!! if you click in the middle of the circle it will move aorund the map and if you click on the edge you can enlarge it.

[Thymallus]

I've done similar with a 2 mile circle. Being in a semi-natural pasture/woodlands/agricultural area there are too many different crops appearing each year to make much sense on a map.
I'm trying the alternative approach based on pollen collected to tell what they are actually foraging on.
I have a variety of pollen loads collected off the varroa board and am analyzing the pollen in honeys from different times of the year. I'd like to think I'll find differences in pollen for food vs pollen from nectar sources. We shall see,
It's going to be a long winter project which may drag into next winter.
Identifying all the similar shaped round pollens is not easy.
Interestingly my bees are collection nectar from exactly what they want. We had an excellent year for lime blossom. There are about a dozen huge trees less than 200 yards from my garden apiary and you could smell them when the wind blew in our direction. Harvested a honey that I thought would at least contain some lime pollen....not a single grain. It's well over 90% field beans and I couldn't find a single field with field beans near me! Either misidentification (unlikely in this case as size, shape and dimensions are identical) or the bees found a field of it to their liking. Nice honey though, very zingy and fresh!
Also this year I had some of the purest heather honey I've ever sampled at over 99% heather pollen. It was exceptional. Usually it's in the 90% mark with wood sage and thistle making up the remainder. Bad year for wood sage and thistle me thinks!

[Mellifera Crofter]

More on drawing circles here (http://www.sbai.org.uk/sbai_forum/showthread.php?1281-Drawing-a-circle-on-Google-maps-Obeattie), GG.
Kitta

[Greengage]

Thanks for the link, I have problems saving the circles they just vanish when I re open the link, probably my problem here ill try again though.

[Mellifera Crofter]

Yes, I've just taken screen shots.
Kitta