ADVANCED BEE-CULTURE. 



The only way in which the raising of 

 plants for honey alone can even approach 

 success, is where, for some reason, there 

 are large tracts of waste land, unfit for 

 cultivation, upon which may be scattered 

 the seeds of some houey-producing plant, 

 like sweet clover, that will grow, thrive 

 and spread without care or cultivation. 



Although the raising t)f plants for hon- 

 ey alone has been painted in such som- 

 bre colors, the raising of field crops that 

 yield honey cannot be truthfully depicted 

 in much brighter hues. It is true there 

 are field crops that yield honey, but un- 

 less it would be profitable to raise them , 

 aside from their honey producing quali- 

 ties, there is but little encouragement 

 for the farmer-bee-keeper to engage in 

 their cultivation. In other words, the 

 honey that may be secured ought not to 

 be allowed to weigh very heavily in de- 

 ciding whether a certain crop should be 

 cultivated. The most promising field 

 crops to raise, that furnish honey in this 

 latitude, are alsike clover and Buckwheat. 

 As already explained, however, a few 

 acres of these near a large apiary are of 

 but little benefit. If the soil, climate, 

 and other conditions are such that it is 

 profitable for the farmers of a given lo- 

 cality to raise one or both of these crops, 

 then they will be raised and the acreage 

 will be such that the yield of, honey from 

 them will be a benefit to an apiarj- in that 

 locality. Much has been said about bee- 

 keepers encouraging the raising of these 

 crops among the surrounding farmers. 

 They have even been urged to furnish 

 the seed free to those farmers within a 

 certain distance who would sow it. If 

 the natural conditions are such that these 

 crops may be grown to advantage, and the 

 bee-keeper can, in some off-hand way, 

 call the attention of surrounding farmers 

 to the desirability of their cultivation. 



and thus succeed in securing their gen- 

 eral introduction without at the same 

 time attracting attention to their honey- 

 producing qualities, well and good. To 

 some this may seem strange advice, but 

 the point is just here: If attention is 

 called to the fact that such and such 

 crops aie fine honey producing plants, 

 and farmers are urged to plant them for 

 this reason, some persons in the neigh- 

 borhood may, upon hearing of this, de- 

 cide that they will keep bees and thus 

 have a share in the harvest. I know of 

 one bee-keeper in this State who labored 

 for years to introduce alsike clover 

 among the neighboring farmers. The 

 soil was peculiarly adapted to this crop, 

 and as the farmers at last found it the 

 most profitable crop they could raise, he 

 finally had the pleasure of seeing hundreds 

 of acres devoted to its cultivation. But 

 this pleasure was not unalloyed. As 

 neighbors saw him securing thousands of 

 pounds of surplus honey, and knew that 

 it came largely from the alsike clover, 

 their course illustrated one of Josh Bil- 

 lings maxims, viz.: "We can never see a 

 fellow pulling fish out of a hole, but we 

 want to throw our hook in there too. ' ' 

 In other words, about as fast as the fields 

 of alsike increased, so did bee-keepers 

 multiply; and the man who worked so 

 hard to improve his location by in- 

 ducing farmers to raise alsikte, was, the 

 last time I saw him, beginning to fear 

 that he might be obliged to "pull up 

 stakes" and seek pastures new. 



The man who is going to engage in 

 bee-keeping as a business cannot be too 

 careful in his selection of a location, to 

 get one in which nature has already done 

 the necessary planting. Let him emu- 

 late the wisdom of Mahomet in going to 

 the mountain when the mountain would 

 not come to him. 



