1884.] BEES. 71 



porridge." If you allow them to increase without regard to 

 when your honey harvest is coming, you will not have workers 

 enough to take the whole of it. It will be just like mowing 

 your hay field before a shower or cutting down all your hay 

 at once. Unless you have help enough to get it all up, you 

 will lose part of your crop. Our honey crop lasts but about 

 six weeks, and by having our stocks in proper strength in 

 time, it can be gathered very profitably. 



Mr. Van Hoosear. Do bees secrete or extract honey ? 



Mr. Jeffries. They extract it from the flower. 



Mr. Van Hoosear. Is it perfect honey then ? 



Mr. Jeffries. No, sir, it is evaporated afterwards. You 

 can take almost any of our prolific honey plants and obtain 

 the liquid from the blossom. Last year, our sumach was so 

 full of honey, that I could turn a blossom over on a sheet of 

 white paper and it would be covered with the dilute honey in 

 its crude form. That would need evaporating about three- 

 fourths. The honey from flowers does not need so much 

 evaporation. 



Mr. Augur. I would like to ask Mr. Jeffries if he will 

 name in their order some of the best honey-producing plants ? 



Mr. Jeffries. Our best honey-producing plant, early in 

 the spring, is the yellow willow. It has a spike of flowers 

 about as long as your finger and about as large round. The 

 first blossom the bees work on is that of the skunk cabbage, 

 and, after that, the others that follow are not of much account 

 other than to start the early breeding. But the first plant 

 that yields honey in abundance is the yellow willow. Then 

 come our fruit blossoms, and, when the hard maple blossoms, 

 that is another. Soft maple is a good honey tree, but it gen- 

 erally blossoms in a season when the bees cannot get the 

 advantage of it ; they cannot get the honey that it secretes, 

 and for that reason it does not amount to a great deal. After 

 the fruit blossoms are gone, and the blossoms from the trees, 

 there is a little scarcity until we get the white clover blossoms 

 and the blossoms of small fruits. After the small fruits and 



