most grateful recipients of such favors 

 bestowed on them, and repay it ten-fold 

 in honey. 



Samuel Fish. Ohio, endorses spider 

 plant as a most excellent honey plant : 

 he thinks it one of the best. 



The Secretary read the following pa- 

 per, entitled 



Bee Pasturage. 



Mr. President and Gentlemen of the 

 Convention : As our honey crop mainly 

 depends upon certain honey plants, ft 

 necessarily follows that our bees should be 

 provided with them, so that they can collect 

 nectar from early spring to late autumn. 

 These plants should be kept in abundance 

 so that when there is plenty of saccharine 

 secretion in them the bees will not be 

 obliged to stay at home. 



Many bee-keepers think no more about 

 bee-pasturage than they would of feeding 

 the beautiful songsters of the woods. >; ' Tis 

 true" they may believe there is an abund- 

 ance of honey plants growing wild, under 

 the best circumstances that nature will per- 

 mit. Though this may be so with many 

 localities, it is not so in all places. The 

 basswood winch may grow with great luxu- 

 rience here, and the bees get a good flow of 

 honey, a few miles further on there may be 

 none of it. Where field flowers full of rich 

 honey are in abundance, bees will com- 

 mence to gather surplus early in the season. 



All kinds of honey plants are not favor- 

 able to all locations ; the basswood will not 

 grow where it is wet and marshy ; in such 

 places the willow, maple, golden reds. 

 and Spanish needles grow abundantly, and 

 in such locations bees may have very little 

 surplus in the early part of the season 

 while in autumn they will have every cell 

 filled with the most delicious honey. * The 

 white cloveris fast becoming the best honey 

 plant for it is genial to nearly all soils and 

 can he found every where, along the road- 

 sides, in the meadows, and in the pastures, 

 and in my opinion it blooms longer where 

 cattle are herded than elsewhere. 



About '2(i rods from my apiary is a field of 

 f30 acres, used for herding cattle, and to-day 

 the white clover is blooming with the same 

 luxurience that it did in June, and the bees 

 are tilling their hives with honey gathered 

 from it. There are years where the white 

 clover has yielded no honey and bees have 

 had to gather from other sources. As bee- 

 keeping is fast becoming one of the great 

 industries of America, we must provide our 

 bees with ample bee-pasturage ; if not 

 limited to a few kinds, let there he great 

 variation in the time of bloom. When the 

 season is wet. white clover contains no 

 honey, then buckwheat and borage must 

 supply iis place; the latter 1 believe is one 

 of the most productive honey plants we 

 have. 



Let every bee-keeper produce as much 

 honey as possible, so that others may he 

 induced to recuperate, and that they may 

 have pleasure as well as profit. Virgil says : 



"The gifts of heaven my following suiil- pursues, 

 Aerial honey and ambrosial dews." 



L. H. Pammi.i.. Jr. 

 LaCrosse. Wis., Sept. 19, 1880. 



517 



A. A. Freidenburg, Ohio, had ex- 

 pended $40 for honey plants. lie put 

 in about 150 feet square of mignonette 



reseda odorata . and has not realized 

 one-fourth its cost. Lady-slippers or 

 balsams are good. Last fail lie gathered 

 about 1,000 roots of the Simpson honey 

 plant, and knows he has been well re- 

 paid for his trouble, lie has tried spi- 

 der plant, and likes it. The blossoms 

 are so shaped that the rains do not wash 

 out the nectar. 



Rev. L. Johnson, Kentucky, was de- 

 cidedly in favor of planting for honey. 

 He thought a variety of plants was best. 

 Some seasons one plant would bloom 

 and yield largely of nectar. while another 

 might not prove satisfactory, and vice 

 verso,. 



Mr. Harrington, Ohio, hoped the gen- 

 tlemen present would not overlook the 

 many excellent qualities of ground ivy. 

 It was a hardy, thrifty plant: would 

 grow anywhere, and under the most ad- 

 verse circumstances ; if you turned it 

 upside down it would blossom up from 

 the other side, and you could not kill it 

 with a club ; besides it was such a pro- 

 verbial bloomer, that the season when 

 it failed to blossom you would have no 

 taxes to pay. 



II. B. Price, Ohio, suggested lucerne 

 or alfalfa clover, which had been ex- 

 tensively grown along the banks of the 

 Ohio river by the late Mr. S. Mangold. 



P. W. McFatridge, Indiana, spoke fa- 

 vorably of buckwheat, and said that 

 aside from the honey, the grain obtained 

 from it would always amply pay for its 

 cultivation. 



D. A. Jones. Ontario, said there was 

 nothing equal to Bokhara clover. It 

 blossoms early in the summer, and till 

 winter kills it ; the stalk is strong and 

 well set, growing from 5 to lOfeet high, 

 and well covered with bloom. He was 

 so well pleased with it that, after sev- 

 eral years' trial, he will this fall plant 

 28 acres of it. The plant has often been 

 identified as melilot or sweet clover, but 

 the speaker thought he could detect a 

 difference. 



Question. — Do you think it will pay 

 to plant it with a special view to its 

 honey yield V 



.Mr. Jones. — Yes sir ; I know it will. 



A. Benedict, Ohio, has observed that 

 the (low of honey to the flowers is like 

 that of sap in the trees, and an ad\ erse 

 wind will dry it up. lie has often been 

 in the forests while making maple sugar, 

 and with a favorable wind the sap would 

 flow in a continuous stream ami sugar- 

 making would goon very sal isfactorily : 

 but if the wind changed to come vig- 

 orously from a northerly direction, the 

 flow of sap would cease', and with it the 



