244 MANUAL OF THE APIARY. 



beggar- ticks, Bidens, and Spanish-needles of our marshes, 

 the tick-seed, Coreopsis, also, of the low, marshy places, 

 with hundreds more of the great family Compositae, are replete 

 with precious nectar, and with favorable seasons make the 

 apiarist who dwells in their midst jubilant, as he watches the 

 bees, which fairly flood the hives with their rich and delicious 

 honey. In all of this great family, the flowers are small and 

 inconspicuous, clustered in compact heads, and when the 

 plants are showy with bloom, like the sun-flowers, the brilliancy 

 is due to the involucre, or bracts which serve as a frill to dec- 

 orate the more modest flowers. 



I have thus mentioned the most valuable honey plants of 

 our country. Of course there are many omissions. Let all 

 apiarists, by constant observation, help to fill up the list. 



BOOK ON BOTANY. 



I am often asked what books are best to make apiarists 

 botanists. I am glad to answer this question, as the study of 

 botany will not only be valuable discipline, but will also fur- 

 nish abundant pleasure, and more, give important practical 

 information. Gray's Lessons, and Manual of Botany, in one 

 volume, published by Ivison, Phinney, Blakeman & Co., New 

 York, is the most desirable treatise on this subject. 



PEACTICAL CONCLUSIONS. 



It will pay well for the apiarist to decorate his grounds 

 with soft and silver maples, for their beauty and early bloom. 

 If his soil is rich, sugar maples and lindens may well serve a 

 similar purpose. The Judas tree, too, and tulip trees, both 

 North and South, may well be made to ornament the apiarist's 

 home. For vines, obtain the wistarias. 



Sow and encourage the sowing of Alsike clover and silver- 

 leaf buckwheat in your neighborhood. Be sure that your 

 wife, children and bees, can often repair to a large bed of the 

 new giant or grandiflora mignonette, and remember that it, 

 with cleome and borage, blooms till frost. Study the bee 

 plants of your region, and then study the above table, and pro- 

 vide for a succession, remembering that the mustards, rape and 

 buckwheat may be made to bloom almost at pleasure, by sow- 



