6 LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY 



itself send out a swarm a month or two later : but a 

 swarm in July is not to be despised; it will store no 

 clover or linden honey for the " grand seignior and 

 the ladies of his seraglio," but plenty of the rank 

 and wholesome poor man's nectar, the sun-tanned 

 product of the plebeian buckwheat. Buckwheat 

 honey is the black sheep in this white flock, but 

 there is spirit and character in it. It lays hold of 

 the taste in no equivocal manner, especially when at 

 a winter breakfast it meets its fellow, the russet 

 buckwheat cake. Bread with honey to cover it from 

 the same stalk is double good fortune. It is not 

 black, either, but nut-brown, and belongs to the 

 same class of goods as Herrick's 



"Nut-brown mirth and russet wit." 



How the bees love it, and they bring the delicious 

 odor of the blooming plant to the hive with them, so 

 that in the moist warm twilight the apiary is redo- 

 lent with the perfume of buckwheat. 



Yet evidently it is not the perfume of any flower 

 that attracts the bees; they pay no attention to the 

 sweet-scented lilac, or to heliotrope, but work upon 

 sumach, silkweed, and the hateful snapdragon. In 

 September they are hard pressed, and do well if they 

 pick up enough sweet to pay the running expenses 

 of their establishment. The purple asters and the 

 goldenrod are about all that remain to them. 



Bees will go three or four miles in quest of honey, 

 but it is a great advantage to move the hive near the 

 good pasturage, as has been the custom from the ear- 

 liest times in the Old World. Some enterprising 



