The Valuable Honey Plants. 339 
I am informed by Prof. W. W. Tracy, that the gardeners 
in the vicinity of Boston keep bees that they may perform 
this duty. Mr. Root found in New York a greenhouse, 
where bees were kept at work all winter, to save the other- 
wise necessary hand fertilization, which was very laborious 
and expensive. That bees ever injure blossoms and thus 
effect damage to the fruitage of such plants as buck wheat— 
or to any plants, as is sometimes claimed—is utterly absurd 
and without foundation. 
But the principal source of honey is still from the flowers. 
WHAT ARE THE VALUABLE HONEY PLANTS? 
In the northeastern part of our country the chief reliance, 
for May, is the fruit blossoms, willows, and sugar maples. 
In June, white clover, Alsike clover, and raspberries yield 
largely of the most attractive honey, both as to appearance 
and flavor. In July, the incomparable basswood makes 
both bees and apiarist jubilant. In August, buckwheat 
offers a tribute, which we welcome, though it be dark and 
pungent in flavor, while with us in Michigan, August and 
September give us a profusion of bloom which yields to 
no other in the richness of its capacity to secrete honey, 
and is not cut off till the autumn frosts—usually about 
September 15. 
Thousands of acres of willow-herb (Fig. 184), golden 
rod, boneset, asters, and other autumn flowers of our new 
northern counties, as yet have blushed unseen, with fra- 
grance wasted. This unoccupied territory, unsurpassed in 
its capability for fruit production, covered with grand forests 
of maple and basswood, and spread with the richest of 
autumn bloom, offers opportunities to the practical apiarist 
rarely equaled except in Texas and the Pacific States. In 
these localities one or two hundred pounds a season to the 
colony and its increase, is no surprise to the apiarist, while 
even four or five hundred are not isolated cases. 
In the following table will be found a list of valuable 
honey plants. Those in the first column are annual, bien- 
nial or perennial; the annual being enclosed in a paren- 
thesis thus: (); the biennial enclosed in brackets thus: [ ]}; 
while those in the second column are shrubs or trees; the 
