146 BEEKEEPING 



Honey dew can be eaten — at least I 

 have known persons who ate it and said 

 they liked it. As for myself — with that 

 honey-sensitive throat I mentioned — if I 

 should take one taste of honey dew noth- 

 ing would help me but a fire extinguisher. 

 The pure food laws specifically mentioned 

 the product as not being saleable under 

 the name of honey. 



There is another class of honey plants 

 about which the beekeeper should know 

 and these are the very early blooming 

 sorts that appear in spring. Practically 

 none of them produces surplus, but many 

 of them are valuable because of the fact 

 that they enable the colonies to increase 

 in strength in time for the later flowers. 



The earliest blooming plants furnish 

 practically no nectar but they do furnish 

 what is quite as important to the bee, and 

 that is pollen. Some of them, like the ha- 

 zel, furnish pollen in tremendous quanti- 

 ties. Following the hazel bloom, the willows 

 and true poplars supply pollen in al- 



