THE BEE-KBEPERS' REVIEW 



89 



Sweet Clover for Bee Pasture 



By E. E. BURTON, Falmouth, Ky. 



A fine lot of bees of the best 

 strains, with modern equipment of 

 hives, and apparatus to handle the 

 product, are of little value without a 

 flow of nectar to provide a surplus 

 of honey. Excepting in a few very 

 favored localities, the blossoms of 

 trees, shrubs and plants, both wild 

 and cultivated, seldom furnish a de- 

 pendable supply of nectar, and for 

 many years beekeepers have resorted 

 to sowing special crops for their bees. 

 But with an increasing demand for 

 farm products the land owner will 

 hardly feel justified in devoting his 

 fields to something that will afford 

 bee pasture only, and if some crop 

 can be grown that will be profitable 

 to the farmer and at the same time 

 produce a strong flow of nectar for 

 good honey, then that is a crop much 

 wanted. 



There are three principal kinds of 

 sweet clover growing in the United 

 States, known as Melilotus alba or 

 white blossom sweet clover, Melilotus 

 officinalis or biennial yellow blossom, 

 and Melilotus indica, an annual yel- 

 low blossom kind. The last named 

 species is a small, dwarfish plant, and 

 is not likely ever to be much utilized 

 by farmers. This discussion will be 

 limited to the first two species named, 

 which are biennial plants making 

 large growth of both tops and roots. 

 In Northern Kentucky the biennial 

 yellow begins blooming about the mid- 

 dle of May and continues to flower 

 three to four weeks. The white sweet 

 clo'.er comes into bloom two or three 

 weeks later and flowers four to five 

 weeks, but has a habit of producing 

 some flowers throughout the summer, 

 even until frost when grazed. The 

 flowering of either kind can be post- 

 poned until late in the summer or 

 even in the fall by cutting the first 

 crop for hay or by grazing the first 

 growth. 



The honey produced from sweet 

 clover is clear and almost water white. 

 It has a distinctive flavor that is very 

 pleasing to most users of honey. The 

 flow of nectar is abundant and is less 

 affected by drought than in other 

 plants, as sweet clover has a large 

 root growth tapping the subsoil deep- 

 ly for moisture. The yellow blossom 

 sweet clover becomes available for 



bee pasture about the close of the sea- 

 son of most plants flowering in the 

 spring, such as wild flowers, fruits, 

 little white clover, locust, etc., and fol- 

 lowing that the white sweet clover 

 carries the pasture through the mid- 

 dle of the summer when there is little 

 else for bees to work on. 



Until recent years, beekeepers have 

 done more to spread sweet clover than 

 any others, but their activities were 

 limited mostly to sowing it along 

 roadsides, waste places, vacant lots, 

 etc. When he undei-took to tell the 

 farmer of its usefulness, the latter 

 suspicioned the motives of the bee- 

 keeper's good advices, and decided 

 not to be "worked" for free bee pas- 

 ture on his lands in any such fashion. 

 But the seed sown by the "bee man" 

 along the wayside worked into the 

 ground, even on stony and hai'd 

 ground, and a harvest of a hundred 

 fold is being reaped by both the bee- 

 keeper and the farmer. The sweet 

 clover grew up in its luxuriance, and 

 the farmer watched his stock feeding 

 upon it; he saw it had affected a 

 change in the soil and became inter- 

 ested in the plant. Today, sweet 

 clover is attracting more interest and 

 is being discussed by farmers more 

 than any other forage plant, except- 

 ing alfalfa. 



Sweet clover stands out most prom- 

 inently as a fertilizing crop. Being 

 a legume it is capable of storing in 

 its roots, stems and leaves large 

 amounts of that valuable element of 

 plant food, nitrogen, which it takes 

 from the air, and enriches the ground 

 for the benefit of future crops. Its 

 adaptability to a great variety of 

 soils and differences of climate makes 

 it of general usefulness. The amount 

 of humus produced is very large, and 

 the thick, fleshy roots decay quickly, 

 leaving the ground mellow and rich. 

 In a few counties in Northern Ken- 

 tucky the value of this plant was 

 recognized early by the farmers, and 

 utilized by them to restore washed 

 and worn-out hill lands that had been 

 badly abused. They sowed it broad- 

 cast on top of the ground in winter 

 and early spring, on lands that were 

 so rough' and gullied as to prevent cul- 

 tivation. The rains, freezes and 

 thaws worked the seed into the ground 



