200 AMERICAN HONEY PLANTS 



escape of water; the latter may result from pressure on the one hand or 

 osmotic draft on the other, because the outer protoplasm is permeable to 

 water but not to sugar. When sugar is secreted, this protoplasmic layer 

 becomes to a greater or less degree permeable to the escaping sugar. This 

 is one phase of the activity of the living protoplasm, for secretion is a vital 

 phenomenon. What greater or less permeability of protoplasm actually 

 consists in is a matter of theory rather than observation, but the phenom- 

 enon is a subject of observation and experiment. Alternating warmth and 

 cold, within limits, affect it; it has its optimum, at a rather high tempera- 

 ture, as well as its minimum and maximum. Through an adequately per- 

 meable membrane, the flow of either water or sugar may be outwards— 

 as it is in normal secretion, or inwards — when the secretion is absorbed — 

 ctS experiments show to be true under some conditions. 



Water for nectar secretion is obtained in the first place through the 

 roots of the plant and travels from the point of absorption to the point 

 of secretion. Sugar for nectar secretion is manufactured within the plant, 

 very close to the point where it is secreted. It is primarily a product of 

 tne carbon-fixing or photo-synthetic activity that marks green plants as 

 the food-makers of the world. Sugars appear to be among the earliest- 

 formed of such carbon-containing or organic substances in the plant; but 

 usually they are changed into starch for storage, and this is subsequently 

 digested or transformed into a soluble sugar when the time of its use 

 comes. The cells about some nectar glands are storage repositories of. 

 sugar; in other cases they accumulate a reserve of starch, as raw material, 

 before their activities begin in supplying sugar. 



Evidently, back of the nectar-production of a given day or season, very 

 closely related to its own optimum conditions of temperature and humid- 

 ity, lies the earlier vegetation of the nectar-producing plants. Strength 

 and vigor of growth, a good reserve of stored food from the year before, 

 cr favorable spring season, these would seem logically to affect the activ- 

 ity of the plant in performing this as well as others of its functions. 

 Kenoyer's conclusions, from Strong's honej'-gathering statistics, give sup- 

 liort to this expectation : "There is an evident alteration between good 

 and poor years," as in apple production; "a good year has a rainfall 

 slightly above the average, preceded by an autumn, winter and spring with 

 more than the average precipitation," affording adequate and lasting soil 

 moisture; "a rainy May scarcely fails to precede a good honey season," 

 for the same reason, "a cold winter has no detrimental effect on the yield 

 of the succeeding season, 'but a cold March reduces it," through preventing 

 a fair early growth of the honey plants; "a winter of heavj'' snowfall, in 

 the great majority of cases, is followed by a larger honey yield," because 

 of its contribution to the soil moisture and the protection afforded the 

 plants during their hibernation. 



Of these conclusions, most bear directly on the conditions favorable 

 for nectar secretion by the plants; some bear as directly on those favor- 

 able for the wintering in prime condition of the bees. Honey production 

 rests upon both, not only in June and July and on individual days in those 



