The Russellville Democrat., 1893-08-31
HONEY AND HONEY PLANTS.

ft0ftEE Nt$E fiNNf F--rtr VI
 The popular idea is that all flowers alike produce honey, and that bees pass from blossom to blossom indiscriminately col lscting the sweet fluid. This, howerever, like many ether popular notions, is incor- rect By no means all flowers yield honey, and most of them yield it very scantily.
 Indeed those plants visited by h. ney bees
 which yield any considerable amount above that consumed by the bees from day to day are, in any one section of the country, limited to very small number, and usual
 Iy not more than one or at most two of these plantc are in blossom at one time. There are, however, a good many flowers that yield some honey, yet are for various reasons not visited by honey bees, among which we may name the honeysuckle (visited, however, sometimes for the poll len) and plants of the buttercup family. In some cases the honey bees cannot reach the honey, in others 1t is probably not pal atable to them.
 It is also true that there is a great difference in the amount of honey produced in different years by the same species of plants. Sometimes there seems to be almost no honey at all in white clo
 yer, one of the best honey plants in our Northern states, while at other times hon ey is in the blossoms for few days, and
 then it suddenly disappears, or in other seasons there is honey so long as blossoms of clover are to be found. The secretion of honey does not depend upon the season
 being moist, for usually the honey flow
 is greatest in dry seasons. There does
 seem to be some conr ection between the
 amount of honey produced and the charac-
 ter of the soil upon which the plants grow.
 Thus, clover growing on clayey ground
 seems to yield more honey than that
 growing on hillsides where there is but
 little clay The same is true of other
 plants. Often there is honey in one dis
 trict and none in another not far dis
 tant. The plants which yield
 "surplus' honey in the North Allan
 tic states in ordinary seasons are the red
 and black rasp pberriss, the white clover,
 the basswood and the buckwheat Some
 other plants may yield small additional
 quantities, but are hardly of practical
 importance. There are, however, some
 early spring flowers giving honey which is
 useful in stimulating brood rearing in the
 hives, without which there is no hope of any surplus.
 The practical bee keeper knows that his
 hopes of ob aiming honey all depend upon his having his hives full of bees when the
 flow" comes. Brood is produced in quantity only when some honey can be obtained from flowers then in bloom. Hence the importance to the apiarist of the early blooming flowers The willows of several species, and the silver and red naples, blossom in March and April, de. pending upon the season. They yield both honey and pollen, and whenever the days are warm enough the bees constantly visit them. If one is about his apiary on warm days in March and April, he will no. tice the bees coming in with pollen even al times when no flowers have been observed At such times they doubtless have found blossoms on some warm bank and are mak ing good use of them. The poplar trees also bloom in April little later than the willows. Reference is here had to the true aspen poplars, not the tulip poplar The dandelion and straw berry blossoms are much visited by bees. Later, about the frst of May, we have the sugar maple and the blossoms of the fruit trees the peach, cherry, plum, apple, pear, quince, etc These all yield honey and pollen. The locust trees (both the honey and the black locust) blossom after the fruit trees and before the white clover. Surp'us is seldom stored from these blossoms, though they are good honey producers. The honey from white clover is the whitest and finest produced. It is really free from any pecu | liar or offensive taste or odor, and is gen eral favorite. In the more north ern states the red raspberry commences to bloom a little later han the white clover This is valuable honey plant of which bee keepers in the South are deprived. This honey is con sidered by many to be equal to that oi the white clover. In July the baeswood
 blossoms. This tree yields great amour, of honey, but unfortunately there are nc longer many trees to furnish blossoms and
 nectar. This honey is darker than that | from clover, and has also a peculiar odor
 which is unpleasant to many persons. The
 last plant of value as a honey producer il
 buckwheat, which begins to blossom iI August and continues until frost The honey from buckwheat is dark and has 6 taste of it's own which is not offensive
 This honey is very rich, and taste for il | is speedi y acquired. The cultivation oi this plant is becoming, year by year, more restricted, and is now confined to the l newer and more mountainous
 sections. We place among the plants which produce small or variable amount of honey the mint | and fgwort families; also the asters and goldenrods Of the first family, the hints
 we have the horehound, the sage, berga
 mot, the catlip and the motherwort, all producing considerable honey Of this group, the most remarkable is the mother
 wort Leonurus cardiaca), which is constant ly visited by bees while it is in blossom The supply of honey is limited oIly by the
 number of plants, which at present ir
 m st places is small The fgwor, | (Scrophularia n,odosa) is an excellent honey plant. The wild mustard, the teasel, the ooneset, the wild sul flowers, the Spanish
 needles and the snap dragons, as also the
 smartweeds, produce some honey, though
 in most places the total is of little value On newly cleared land the sumac springs up, and it is held by some to be a valuable source of honey, and that considerable amounts are some years collected from it. -Dr. c. G. Groff, in The Popular Science Monthly for August.