168 JOHN H. LOVELL 



miles apart, might have arrived at diametrically opposite con- 

 clusions as to the value of red clover as a honey plant. 35 



It is clear that the presence or absence of honey-bees in large 

 numbers on the flowers of red clover is not determined by the 

 color or odor, but by the accessibility or inaccessibility of the 

 nectar. Drouth may not render the nectar accessible more than 

 once in ten years, but when it does happen, the bees promptly 

 avail themselves of the opportunity. Evidently they must 

 inspect the flowers each season, but, finding no booty, they do 

 not often repeat their visits. The utter inconsistency with the 

 facts of the claim that the absence of insects from certain con- 

 spicuous flowers proves that bright coloration is of no advantage 

 and that an agreeable odor is a necessity, could not be better 

 shown than in the instance where the Italian bees were able to 

 obtain the nectar and the black bees were not. 



The flowers of alfalfa, Medicago sativa L., a leguminous plant 

 very extensively cultivated in the west for forage, offers very 

 similar phenomena. In the irrigated regions of California and 

 Colorado, nectar is yielded so abundantly that alfalfa surpasses 

 all the other local honey plants in importance, even the famous 

 purple, black and white sages of the former state. But in Kansas, 

 for example, the results are strikingly different. In the Western 

 part of the state along the river bottoms the flowers can usually 

 be depended on for nectar during most of the season, while 

 around Topeka, bees only occasionally visit the bloom. A bee- 

 keeper who has lived in Eastern Kansas for thirty-five years 

 states he has never seen a bee on the flowers, or known of a pound 

 of alfalfa honey being produced in that section. >* Where alfalfa, 

 then, secretes nectar freely the vast acreage is constantly the 

 resort of millions of bees; but in localities where it is nectarless, 



"Root, E. R., "Red Clover as a Honey Plant," Gleanings in Bee Culture, 34: 

 990. The three apiarists cited in this article are .careful observers and recognized 

 authorities on bee-culture. Buttel-Reepen has remarked: " It seems to me that the 

 biological knowledge concerning Apis mellifica which has been gained by practical 

 bee-keeping has scarcely entered scientific literature ... In proof of this 

 there are the vague, defective assertions which are found in the newest editions of 

 scientific works." "Are Bees Reflex Machines," p. 1. 



» Root, E. R., " Bee-keeping in the Semi-arid Regions of Oklahoma, Kansas and 

 Nebraska," 41 :345. In the eastern states of North America, white clover, Trifolium 

 repens L., is the foremost honey plant, and the domestic bee stores from its bloom 

 annually hundreds of tons of an excellent, white honey; but in France and Switzer- 

 land it yields no appreciable quantity of nectar and one may travel several kilo- 

 meters and rot see a bee on it. " White Clover in Europe," Am. Bee Journal, 

 53:331. 



