4 THE AGRICULTURAL SITUATION FoR 1918. 
ment and relatively little in labor, and the honey crop could be in- 
creased 10 or even 20 times without increasing the cost of production: 
per pound to an appreciable degree. 
Beekeeping may be practiced in almost all habitable parts of the 
United States, but is not equally profitable everywhere. Its possibili- 
ties as a business depend on the abundance of nectar-secreting plants. 
Not all flowers secrete nectar, and even the best of nectar-secreting 
plants vary considerably in value within their range. For example, 
alfalfa, which is the source of an abundance of beautiful white honey 
in the high irrigated region of Colorado, Utah, and Idaho, is worthless 
as a nectar source in the East, and in the lower regions of California, 
New Mexico, and Arizona it produces an amber honey of somewhat 
different flavor. White clover, from which the choicest honey is pro- 
duced in northeastern United States, is of less value in the South and 
of little, if any, value west of the Cascade Mountains, from the stand- 
point of honey production. 
OPPORTUNITY FOR EXPANSION OF BEEKEEPING. 
In choosing a place for commercial beekeeping, attention should be 
paid to the regions best adapted to this industry, and it should also 
be remembered that not all localities within a main region are equally 
valuable. The chief honey regions of the United States are (1) the 
white clover region of the Northeast; (2) the southeastern region, 
west to eastern Texas, with a wide variety of nectar sources; (3) the 
alfalfa region of the West; (4) the mountain sage region of southern 
California, ‘and (5) the semi-arid region of Texas and adjacent States. 
In all of these regions commercial beekeeping is practiced extensively 
and in all of them, too, there is room for a great expansion of the indus- 
try as a commercial enterprise. 
In addition to these larger regions, many more restricted areas offer 
special inducements to the beekeeper. It is possible to name here only 
a few of these, simply to indicate the type of localities in which bee- 
keeping is profitable. Typical plants of restricted distribution and 
of value for nectar are buckwheat, wild raspberry and willowherb in 
the burned and cut over forests of the North, Spanish needle in swampy 
lands, heartsease or smartweed in cornfields of the Middle West,-tupelo 
in southern swamps, and linden or basswood. 
The valuable honey sources of the United States are so many that 
a list would be of considerable size, and if all the plants from which 
honeybees gather nectar were included, the list would be formidable. 
From the ones here mentioned it is evident now even more than in 
normal times that a beekeeper must examine his locality carefully to 
see what honey plants are at hand before embarking in commercial. 
beekeeping. There is no difficulty in finding suitable locations, how- 
