FIFTY YEARS AMONG THE BEES 121 



few colonies, it is quite possible that I might secure some 

 surplus from more than one of them. 



Dandelions help no little in brood-rearing. 



Raspberries are eagerly visited by the bees, but there 

 are not enough of them to give a noticeable amount of 

 raspberry honey. It is a very pleasant sight to see the 

 bees thickly covering a field of raspeberries in full bloom 

 (Fig. 45). 



Red clover may yet be of importance. Whether it 

 be the change in the bees or the change in the season I do 

 not know, but formerly I never saw a bee on red clover 

 except at rare intervals, and now it is quite common. I 

 think it may be that the bees are different. 



Alsike clover is becoming common. 



SWEET CLOVER. 



It is hard to tell just how much, but I think the bees 

 gather quite a little from sweet clover (Fig. 46). The 

 earlier part of the sweet clover bloom is probably of no 

 great value, because it comes at the same time as white 

 clover, but it continues after white clover is gone, thus 

 making it of greater value. It has a habit of throwing 

 out fresh shoots of blossoms on the lower part of the 

 stalk after the whole stalk has gone to seed and appears 

 dead, and thus it continues the blooming season till freez- 

 ing weather comes on. A branch of this kind will be 

 seen at the right in Fig. 46. I value sweet clover for hay. 



Yellow sweet clover blooms from 2 to 4 weeks earlier 

 than white sweet clover, and on that account is of less 

 value in a year when common white clover yields well. 

 But in the years when common white clover is a failure 

 yellow sweet clover may be of very great value, for so 

 far as I know there are no years of failure with either 

 kind of sweet clover. There may be no small advantage 

 in having the annual variety of yellow sweet clover. 



Alfalfa (Fig. 47) is not plenty here. It is a rare 

 thing to see a bee at work upon it, and I think it is gener- 

 ally understood that it does not yield nectar east of the 



