122 rORTY YEARS AMONG THE BEES. 



The summer of 1902 was very wet, and for the first 

 time in my observation heartsease (Fig. 55) was busily 

 worked upon by the bees. Possibly the same thingf mig'ht 

 occur any very wet season. 



CUCUMBERS. 



I think the white clover crop, for some reason, is 

 more unreliable than it was years ago. Some years there 

 is a profusion of clover bloom, but there seems to be no 

 nectar in it. As some little compensation, I think there is 

 more fall pasturage than formerly. One reason for this 

 is that two pickle factories are located at Marengo, and 

 my bees have the run of one or two hundred acres of 

 cucumbers. And yet I must confess that I am not at all 

 sure what cucumber honey is. Sometimes the honey 

 stored at the time of cucumber bloom is objectionable in 

 flavor, and sometimes the flavor is fine. Two or three 

 years the bees at the Hastings apiary stored in the fall 

 some fine honey, remarkable for whiteness, and I've no 

 idea what it was gathered from. On the whole I am in 

 a poor honey region, and would have sought a better one 

 long ago but for ties other than the bees. 



ARTIFICIAL PASTURAGE. 



I have made some effort to increase the pasturage for 

 my bees. Of spider-plant I raised only a few plants. It 

 seemed too difficult to raise to make me care to experi- 

 ment with it on a larger scale. Possibly if I knew better 

 how to manage it, the difficulty might disappear. Or, on 

 other soil it might be less difficult to manage. The same 

 might be said of the other things I have tried. My soil 

 is clay loam, and hilly, although I live in a prairie State. 

 I am at least a mile distant from prairie soil. I have tried 

 Alsike many times, and never had a good stand but once ; 

 perhaps an acre then. I had an acre of as fine figwort as 



