84 BEES. 
gather a sweet liquid called “honeydew,” produced by various scale 
insects and plant-lice, but the honeydew honey made from it is 
quite unlike floral honey in flavor and composition and should not be 
sold for honey. It is usually unpalatable and should never be used 
as winter food for bees, since it usually causes dysentery (p. 40). 
When nectar or honeydew has been thickened by evaporation and 
otherwise changed, the honey is sealed in the cells with cappings of 
beeswax. 
It is not profitable to cultivate any plant solely for the nectar 
which it will produce, but various plants, such as clovers, alfalfa, 
and buckwheat, are valuable for other purposes and are at the same 
time excellent honey plants; their cultivation is therefore a benefit 
to the bee keeper. It is often profitable to sow some plant on waste 
land; sweet clovers are often used in this way. The majority of 
honey-producing plants are wild, and the bee keeper must largely 
accept the locality as he finds it and manage his apiary so as to get the 
largest possible amount of the available nectar. Since bees often fly 
as far as 2 or 3 miles to obtain nectar, it is obvious that the bee 
keeper can rarely influence the nectar supply appreciably. Before 
deciding what kind of honey 
to produce the bee keeper 
should have a clear knowl- 
edge of the honey resources 
of his locality and of the 
demands of the market in 
which he will sell his crop. 
If the bulk of the honey is dark, or if the main honey flows are slow 
and protracted, it will not pay to produce comb honey, since the 
production of fancy comb honey depends on a rapid flow. The best 
localities for comb-honey production are in the northern part of the 
United States east of the Mississippi River, where white clover is a 
rapid and abundant yielder. Other parts of the United States where 
similar conditions of rapidity of flow exist are also good. Unless 
these favorable conditions are present it is better to produce extracted 
honey. 
Fig. 21.—Knives for uncapping honey. 
EXTRACTED HONEY.! 
Extracted honey is honey which has been removed by means of 
centrifugal force from the combs in which the bees stored it. While it 
is possible to adulterate extracted honey by the addition of cheap 
sirups, this is rarely done, perhaps largely on account of the possi- 
bility of detection. It may be said to the credit of bee keepers as a 
class that they have always opposed adulteration of honey. 
1 For further discussion of the production and care of extracted honey, see Bulletin 75, Part I, Bureau 
of Entomology. 
447 
