Bismarck weekly tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1884-1943, 1891-01-30
is THERE A HONEY PLANT!
Trying to Find One at the Michigan AS-
ricultural Experiment Station.

I hhIR w AA" oAS NV S-S > |
ricultural Experiment Station.
Professor A. J.. Cook has been expert ,
menting with three so called honey
plants, in the hope that he might find
that could be relied on year
after year to furnish bee nectar. The
three plants were the Cleome integrifo-
liza, or Rocky mountain honey plant, the
Echinops spherocephalus O Chapman
honey plant, and a foreign mint of the
genus Melissa. The bees visited the
echinops freely and obtained consider
able honey, just at the time of year
when other blossoms were scarce. But
the plant does not bloom until the Sec
ond year, and seed must be planted every
year. Even this would not be so dis
couraging. but the seed may fail to ger
inmate at any time and * prove a fail
ure. So the experiment with the echi-
nops was unsuccessful. The cleome
must be planted in autumn. Professor
Cook obtained some of it fresh from
Colorado and planted it. He found it
did not come up we'll in Michi-
gan, though some of it was plant
ed upon sandy soil and other upon
clay ground. Again, the flowers did
not secrete nectar, and the bees worked
on them only occasionally. The cleome
also was a disappointment.
Of the melissa Professor Cook says:
The melissa is an annual. We planted
it for two successive years. 1t did well,
blossomed freely and was visited very
generally by the bees. It grows well OF
both sand and clay, and by sowing early
will to bloom early in July
and continue to bloom for a month or
more. regret to say that it will not
self seed, and must be planted annually.
This is expensive, and it is doubtful if it
| will pay. 1t is to be said, however, that
melissa, in common with the other
minis, seems to attract the bees at all
times of bloom, whatever the season. So
1 am Of the opinion that if any plant will
pay exclusively as a honey plant it will
be some mint. Many of these are peren-
NAL. AS the three acres of melissa last
season was singing with bees all through
the time Of ~blossoming, and as our bees
swarmed in early August, a thing un-
precedented in Michigan, it gives reason
to hope that with a large average we
might secure a honey crop each year
despite the season.
Thus [ believe our experiments indi.
cate that special planting for honey
alone is of doubtful practicability; that
: echinops and cleome, at least, are moi
the plants for such special planting if il
is eve to be a success, and that while
melissa or bee balm is not profitable, as
it is an annual, it is possible that the
perennial mints are the plants, if any
such there be, that will pay us to grow
exclusively as honey plants.
Unless cleome will seed itself it is no
the plant ever for wayside planting.
think we must look to some of the per
sistent minis, or more probably to some
plant valuable for other purposes ever
to plant on the roadside and in waste
places.
| hope next to try melilot or swee
clover, not so much to find whether it il
a valuable honey plant, as we know tina
now, but rather to find if this luxurian'
and vigorous clover may not have othel
important uses; possibly for silage.
shall also hope to plant small beds O
promising mints, in hopes for hints O
some plant that will pay just for necta
and nothing else.