HONEY AND HONEY PLANTS. 545 



auxiliary steam power, under the command of Captain Larsen, 

 and with her we kept company most of the time. He reached the 

 ice about a month earlier than ourselves, and surveyed the pack 

 edge as far as 30° west. Captain Larsen also landed on the South 

 Orkneys and on Cockburn Island, where he obtained several 

 geological specimens. — London Times. 



HONEY AND HONEY PLANTS. 



By Dr. G. G. GEOFF. 



THE popular idea is that all flowers alike produce honey, and 

 that bees pass from blossom to blossom indiscriminately 

 collecting the sweet fluid. This, however, like many other popu- 

 lar notions, is incorrect. By no means all flowers yield honey, 

 and most of them yield it very scantily. Indeed, those plants vis- 

 ited by honeybees which yield any considerable amount above 

 that consumed by the bees from day to day are, in any one section 

 of the country, limited to a very small number, and usually not 

 more than one, or at most two, of these plants are in blossom at 

 one time. There are, however, a good many flowers that yield 

 some honey, yet are for various reasons not visited by honeybees, 

 among which we may name the honeysuckle (visited, however, 

 sometimes for the pollen), and plants of the buttercup family. In 

 some cases the honeybees can not reach the honey, in others it is 

 probably not palatable to them. 



It is also true that there is a great difference in the amount of 

 honey produced in different years by the same species of plants. 

 Sometimes there seems to be almost no honey at all in white 

 clover, one of the best honey plants in our Northern States, 

 while at other times honev is in the blossoms for a few days, and 

 then it suddenly disappears, or in other seasons there is honey 

 so long as blossoms of clover are to be found. The secretion of 

 honey does not depend upon the season being moist, for usually 

 the honey "flow" is greatest in dry seasons. There does seem 

 to be some connection between the amount of honey produced 

 and the character of the soil upon which the plants grow. Thus 

 clover growing on clayey ground seems to yield more honey than 

 that growing on hillsides where there is but little clay. The same 

 is true of other plants. Often there is honey in one district and 

 none in another not far distant. 



The plants which yield " surplus " honey in the North Atlan- 

 tic States in ordinary seasons are the red and black raspberries, 

 the white clover, the basswood, and the buckwheat. Some other 

 plants may yield small additional quantities, but are hardly of 



VOL. XLIII. — 39 



