WINTER NUMBER 107 
Also, the home demand for honey has increased. Figures are 
not available, however, as much of the honey of this country never 
reaches the larger centers of trade. 
The amount of sweet produced by bees is reaily enormous. 
Honey is produced in this country, in ordinary years, in excess 
of two hundred and fifty million pounds. Those plants and 
flowers from which bees gather nectar are legion, and are 
scattered throughout the length and breadth of the land. The 
white-clover belt is the most important honey-producing region, 
because it furnishes not only the leading commercial honey but 
also more than one-half of the honey crop of the entire country. 
This belt extends from Maine to Virginia and westward to the 
great plains. From white clover alone is secured about one 
tenth of the Nation’s crop of honey. This kind is almost color- 
less and has a delicate and delicious flavor. 
According to the United States Department of Agriculture, 
alfalfa honey comes second in importance commercially, while 
sweet clover is third in line of importance. About 4 per cent of 
the Nation’s honey comes from flowers of the cotton plant, 314 
per cent from the bass-wood, 3 per cent from the tulip poplar 
tree and buckwheat, and 2 per cent from the goldenrod. 
California leads all other states in the production of honey. 
In fact, she produces about 20 per cent of the entire Nation’s 
crop. This is because of the. presence of great quantities of 
mountain sages, together with the fact that the beekeepers of 
that state have gone into the business in a business-like manner, 
using modern equipment. 
Florida has, until recent years, been backward in her bee- 
keeping industry. There have been, however, some few pioneer 
beekeepers in this State who have made more than a success of it. 
The late Mr. O. O. Poppleton was considered one of the foremost 
veteran beekeepers in the State, and on the East Coast, where he 
operated, he harvested immense crops of honey from the orange, 
palmetto and mangrove. Mr. W. S. Hart of Hawks Park, also 
a Florida beekeeper of prominence, has for years operated an 
apiary with profitable results in the hammocks along the East 
Coast. Dr. Edwin G. Baldwin, Professor of Latin at the Stetson 
University, has for many years made a business of beekeeping, 
and while it is more a hobby with him, yet it has turned out to 
be a very profitable one. In fact, he has made himself very promi- 
nent as a queen breeder, and his queens, in large numbers, have 
been sent throughout the North. Mr. H. L. Christopher is now 
