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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



Photograph b> Wilhelm Tobien 

 GERMAN BEEHIVES, LIKE SCARECROWS, WEAR STRAW SKIRTS AND TIN-PAN HELMETS 



The Marienwerder flower girl explains that the grotesque coverings protect the colonies from 

 the rain and sun. Such old-fashioned hives cannot be inspected readily. Sometimes a colony becomes 

 queenless and dies before the keeper discovers the absence of the "mother." In Europe, as in the 

 United States, modern equipment is rapidly replacing such apiaries. 



Perhaps the most concentrated honey- 

 producing section in the United States is 

 that surrounding the Great Lalies, where 

 the white Dutch clover, the common variety 

 that grows so abundantly on our lawns, 

 reaches the peak of perfection. There the 

 bees also produce a surplus from alsike 

 clover, sweet clover, basswood, buckwheat, 

 and occasional crops from raspberry and 

 milkweed. 



Another rich area is on the Pacific coast, 

 where the heavily scented orange groves 

 furnish thousands of pounds of highly fla- 

 vored honey. The foothills of California 

 supply sparkling sage honey and a bountiful 

 quota of alfalfa honey comes annually from 

 the Imperial Valley. 



The whitest honey of all, often water- 

 white, is produced from the fireweed, which 

 grows in the burnt-over forests of Wash- 

 ington and Oregon. The Intermountain 

 States send to our eastern and foreign 

 markets carloads of alfalfa and sweet-clover 

 honey, heavy and flavorous. The Dakotas 

 and the surrounding States rank high in 

 large crops. There 100 pounds a colony 

 from sweet clover (Plate VIII) and alfalfa 



is not unusual, and crops of 200 to 250 

 pounds to the colony are frequent in favor- 

 able seasons. 



]\Iany kinds of honey plants occur in 

 the Southern States, where the honeys run 

 the gauntlet of the color scale. Usually 

 the honeys from the South are dark, spicy, 

 and highly flavored. 



Probably no other food is produced over a 

 wider area than honey. Wheat, corn, milk, 

 and potatoes are almost universal, yet their 

 production is restricted to areas having cer- 

 tain soil and climatic conditions, whereas 

 the mountains, the swamps, the deserts, the 

 wind-swept plains, and the Tropics all add 

 their quotas of honey. 



Surely no other food has such romantic 

 associations. Every drop of honey has its 

 origin in the bosom of a delicate flower, 

 where it has been exposed to the rays of 

 the summer sun and bathed with the morn- 

 ing dew. You have only to close your eyes 

 and picture fields of clover, and fill your 

 lungs with the perfumed air from myriad 

 nodding blossoms; or in memory to walk 

 again through scented orange grooves to 

 realize the origin of this incomparable food. 



