84 



THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



that is seldom equalled by any native 

 or exotic. It is strange that it had not 

 long ago been esteemed one of Na- 

 ture's silent unobtrusive blessings. In 

 1874 we procured an engraving of the 

 flower and it has since been more 

 prominently brought before the pub- 

 lic. 



About 1878 it was fully understood 

 by a few to be one of the best flow- 

 ers the honey bee could feast upon 

 for its store of honey. It appears that 

 it is so well satisfied with it as a forage 

 plant that during the season of its 

 bloom few other flowers are visited. 

 After the flower was engraved by us 

 in 1874, it was seen by Miss Aman- 

 da Parsons of East Gloucester, 

 Mass., and pronounced by her as 

 a very exact representation of the 

 flower as it grew in her father's pasture 

 where her bees revelled in its sweet- 

 ness. Miss Parsons sent us a tumbler 

 of the honey made at the season when 

 her bees gave their whole time to 

 gathering honey from its flowers and 

 truly it was no longer a question of its 

 sweetness, whiteness, or purity ; nor a 

 doubt of choice in flowers distin- 

 guished by the honey bee. Doubt- 

 less a traffic could be built up for the 

 sale of plants by the thousand or ten 

 thousand, for it is practicable to grow 

 it by the acre, on a great variety of 

 soil. 



Downing of Newberg, N. Y., who 

 was known as the highest authority 

 as a judge of fruit who was not lacking 

 in his correct judgn^ent of flowers, 

 wrote us from Newberg, N. Y., Feb. 

 24, 1878: "the Clethra has always 

 been a favorite shrub with me, flower- 

 ing at a time when there are but few 

 shrubs in bloom. Its fragance is de- 

 lightful. It is not planted so much 

 as it should be." 



The cultivation of the Clethra is 

 very simple, growing generally on cool 

 or moist soils often in shady locations ; 

 it is also found in strange contrast 

 growing in dry ledgy pastures in 

 patches of small and quite large di- 

 mensions to the exclusion of all other 



shrubs, flowering in the most glaring 

 sun and remaining in bloom several 

 weeks. This exposed situation was 

 on the extreme point of Cape Ann, 

 Mass., in open pasture land. 



To grow it by the acre, for bees, 

 well ploughed land, planted in one 

 to two feet apart, three feet be- 

 tween the rows or four thousand to ten 

 thousand to the acre, cultivated by 

 horse and cultivator as long as the 

 plants will admit, as the plants extend 

 on all sides after the fashion of the 

 old purple lilac or the sweet scented 

 syringa, in a few years a complete 

 mass of the Clethra will occupy the 

 ground affording pasture for the 

 countless numbers of the honey bee. 

 Reading, Mass. 



NO TES FR OM ENTERPRISE 

 APIARY. 



By C. M. Goodspeed. 

 STARTING AN APIARY. 



It is considered good advice to 

 give a beginner, to tell him to buy 

 only a few swarms to start with 

 and let his experience grow with 

 them. To this nearly every bee- 

 keeper will assent. 



Next comes the perplexing 

 question of hive and management. 

 We all have ourpeihive and theo- 

 ries of management, and we are 

 apt to crowd our ideas on people 

 pretty strongly whether we are 

 right or not. We now have a mul- 

 titude of hives to choose from, 

 many of them good and more of 

 them too complicated and theoreti- 

 cal to be of any pi'actical utility. 



It is a strange though well es- 

 tablished fact that nearly all apia- 

 rists, somewhere in their "Bee 

 Fever" experience, have had an 

 atrtaek of hive-inventing which has 

 lasted them until after promulgat- 

 ing two or three worthless boxes 



