THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



377 



ORETELLTNG THE HONEY 

 FLOW OF THE COMING 

 SEASON. BY IRA BARBER. 



.-Vllow TTie to tell the readers of the 



Review wh.ithas been my guide in (k-c;<l- 



in<i the prospects for a crop of clover 



honey, the v.in- 



Z t e r h V fore it 



cotnes. U]) here 



; ;n the norih, if 



^ ihere is not 'uow 



enoui;!! to keep 



ilie ground from 



f r ee z i n g t<> a 



lepth of two or 



ill ret feet, we can 



calculate that 



there wdl be no 



u<=e for sections; 



and that if we keep all our colonies alive, 



it will takeson-e su.garto do it. 



It does not make any difTerence 

 w hether the soil is wet or dry when frozen, 

 nor whether there is a great amount of 

 clover in the fields, there will be only a 

 little honey to be found in the clover 

 after such a winter. Why it is I do not 

 know, unless it is that, deep in the .soil, 

 the little rootlets tail to find the proper 

 nourishment for feeding the plant to keep 

 it in condition to secrete the nectar, as it 

 would under other conditions. 



When we have snow come on with no 

 frost in the ground, come deep enough to 

 keep the fro^t out, and stay on until 

 spring, we can look for a good crop of 

 honey from clover; and it makes little 

 difference what the weather is, if it is so 

 the bees can fly. I have seen great crops 

 of clover honey gathered in seasons when 

 it was so wet that the bees were driven 

 in several times a day, and the ground 

 was perhaps saturated with water through 

 the entire clover season. Then, again, I 

 have seen seasons that were dry all 

 through the clover season, yet the honey 

 came just the same; when it dried up in 

 one place there appeared to be clover in 

 some locality on moist soil that kept the 

 bees supplied all through the season. 



The past two seasons we have had, to 

 all appearances, the nicest kind of weath- 

 er, all through the clover sea.son, such as 

 warm, still days, thunder showers near at 

 hand, occasionally one right with us, and 

 the fields a sea of Alsike clover blos.soms, 

 )'et the honey did not come. But the 

 pollen came in any quantity. Each pre- 

 ceding winter of these two seasons but 

 little snow fell here, and the ground was 

 frozen to a deuth of tN\o feel, or more. 



I first noticed this ca'ise of failure of 

 our honey crop earlj' in the seventies, and 

 from that time to this I have not ."^een a 

 good crop of honey in any season when 

 the ground was frozen deep the previous 

 winter; nor have I seen a season when we 

 had no frost in the ground that we did 

 not get a big crop of honey. 



Some may say that freezing has noth- 

 ing to do with it, for the reason that there 

 are plenty of localities where it never 

 freezes, and yet clover fails to secrete 

 honey just the same. There may be other 

 causes, such as a lack of moisture at the 

 extremities of the little fibers of roots 

 deep down in the soil, which stops the 

 flow of nectar through the plant the 

 same as it does with the sap of the maple 

 tree. 



Years ago, for a period of 30 years, I 

 made large quantities of maple sugar 

 every spring, and occasionally there 

 would cornea dry summer and a dry fall, 

 with so liltle rain that the winter would 

 set in with the ground under the trees as 

 dry as ashes, and it would remain so all 

 winter, and in such seasons we might 

 about as well look for sap to come from a 

 basswood or hemlock as to expect it to 

 flow from a maple tree; and if there did 

 not come heavy rains to saturate the 

 ground, we got no sap, and our sugar 

 season was a failure. 



Now then, as no condition of the weath- 

 er, such as thawing and freezing, can 

 effect the maple, and cause sap to flow 

 when it stands in a bed of dry soil, is it not 

 reasonable to conclude that the cold soil 

 beneath the plants is why no nectar flows 

 into the c)over blossoms? Surely, the 



