1909 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



99 



CONVERSATIONS WITH 

 DOOLITTLE 



OUR 1909 CLOVER-HONEY CROP. 



" There will be a bitter wail from the bee- 

 keepers in the white-clover belt next spring, as 90 

 per cent of the clover is already dead that would 

 produce honey in 1909." 



That is the last sentence in Virgil Weaver's ar- 

 ticle, page 87, February 1. As most of us here 

 are held by our environments right in the clover- 

 belt, it may be a comfort to us to diagnose this 

 clover matter for our own locality. I do not say 

 that what is here written is correct for Valley 

 View, Ky., as I was never there; but I do claim 

 that it is applica'^le to Central New York. 



Mr. Weaver says, "In wet soils that heave things 

 out of the ground by freezing and thawing, white 

 clover will manage to have enough roots stick- 

 ing in the ground to maintain life;" but I have 

 seen hundreds of acres where the roots of white 

 and other clovers were drawn completely out of 

 the soil, and many other hundreds of acres where 

 the plants died when half or two-thirds drawn, 

 from the effects of a dry spring following a win- 

 ter with but little snow and much freezing and 

 thawing. Some seem to think that, because the 

 white-clover stalks creep along the ground and 

 root at many or all of the leaf-joints, it does not 

 heave out like the other clovers with their one 

 tap-root. But as these joint-roots are only tap- 

 roots they are drawn from the soil in the way I 

 tried to explain in the Feb. 1st issue; but as they 

 are smaller and shorter it takes a less number of 

 changes from thawing to freezing to injure or 

 kill them than than it does the longer and strong- 

 er rooted red and alsike varieties. 



All of Mr. Weaver's article leads me to be- 

 lieve that he has a sandy or sandy loam soil, one 

 in which timothy and other grasses, aside from 

 clover, do not thrive; for, outside of gardens and 

 a few waste places, I never saw a white-clover 

 plant that covered a foot in diameter, to say 

 nothing of two feet; and yet with the ground 

 free from the other grasses, as in gardens, it 

 spreads itself just as he says. But the bloom is 

 not in accord with his views as I understand 

 him. The little seedling which comes up the 

 last half of April or during May has to contend 

 with the other grasses which come up with it, if 

 it is in a newly seeded piece, or with grasses 

 already established, as in a pasture, and at best 

 it is August before there are any signs of bloom 

 upon it, and this is after the honey season is past 

 for clover. This shows that such a thing as 

 honey from white-clover seedlings, the first year, 

 is a fallacy. Now comes the spring of the sec- 

 ond year, when the clover-plant is one year old. 

 During the fall before, it will have formed a 

 head, or crown, and perhaps some few stem 

 creepers, though the most of these last are in em- 

 bryo. As the growth commences, these stem 

 creepers push out; and if the season is wet they 

 root at the leaf-joints, as Dr. Miller and Mr. 

 \Veaver tell us. But if the spring is dry, these 

 creepers simply run out for a few joints along the 

 ground, the same as the alsike and red clovers 

 grow out their stems in an upright position 

 While these creepers are growing, the embryo 

 blossoms are beginning to gro^ in the crown; 



and as the cr'epeis advance, the embryo blos- 

 soms at each leaf-joint on the creepers to push 

 out, and thus we have, as a rule, the first clover 

 bloom from the crown of the plant, and that 

 later on from the joints of the creepers. 



Even the novice, must know that the blossoms 

 come out one after another on the stalk stems of 

 the red and alsike clovers, at the base of the low- 

 er leaves first, and so on at each leaf-joint, thus 

 prolonging the blooming season till the end of 

 the growth is reached, or the farmers mowing- 

 machine puts a stop to the whole thing. Now 

 the white-clover stem-creepers put forth blossoms 

 in just the same way, only the stalk-stems creep 

 along the ground instead of standing erect, and 

 keep on blooming until the growth stops, which 

 is earlier in a dry season, when no leaf-stem roots 

 are made, and longer during a wet season where 

 many roots are made. If roots are made, then 

 we have a new plant at each root, a crown form- 

 ing thereon in the fall, much the same way as a 

 strawberry-runner forms new plants; but it dry, 

 so no roots form, then these stem-creepers die 

 back to the original crown as Mr. Weaver says. 



A dry fall does not have so much to do with the 

 blooming of the clover as the spring and early 

 summer does, so long as the clovers are not killed 

 by the fall drouth, as they were not by last fall's 

 dry weather, which was as severe as any I ever 

 knew. To be sure, the crowns at the top of the 

 clover roots are not as large now as they would 

 have been if August, September, and October 

 had been wet; buf if the clovers are not drawn 

 out by a heaving winter, and the spring proves 

 propitious, so as to make many stem-creepers, we 

 may have a greater bloom than with a wet fall 

 and a very dry spring up to July 1st. So I do 

 not see that I have any occasion to provide a less 

 number of supers or supplies for the coming sea- 

 than is my usual custom. 



Mr. Weaver makes no allowance for the at- 

 mospheric conditions, nor the temperature or 

 winds, at the time of the diver bloom. He 

 seems to base his whole structure on what the 

 rainfall was after July 1, 190^, and uses Dr. 

 Miller's bumper crop of last year to substantiate 

 his position. Have I forgotten, or did Dr. M. 

 tell us during some of his "off" years about 

 fields white with clover, but little if any secre- 

 tion of nectar.? Well, be that as it may, some 

 of the years having the most profuse white clo- 

 ver bloom I have ever witnessed passed on and 

 out without enough nectar secretion to give us a 

 pound of clover honey. Why.!" Simply because 

 the conditions of the season were not right for 

 the secretion of nectar during the abundant clo- 

 ver-bloom. Again, with apparently not half a 

 bloom, owing to its being a poor season for the 

 stem-creepers to grow, nectar has poured in to 

 "beat the band," and caught many with their 

 "porridge-dish" wrong side up, because, like Mr. 

 VVeaver, they had taken their bees off to the 

 mountains; or, more properly speaking, they 

 thought there would be little or no crop, and for 

 this reason had failed to provide the needed sup- 

 plies till the down-pour was on them 



If the season proves to be right during the 

 summer of 1909, I see no reason why we should 

 not have a good crop of honey, even though the 

 extreme drouth of last fall may cause the crowns 

 of the white clover to be somewhat dwarfed. 



