Honey 179 



thistle at all, but belongs to the Borage Family, often yields 

 two hundred pounds to a colony, of a honey as clear and 

 dehcate as that of white clover. 



It is stated that sweet clover, the dried leaves of which 

 our grandmothers put in their linen closets, yields from 

 four to five hundred pounds of honey to the acre. Who 

 would imagine, looking over a waste of sweet clover, any 

 such possible harvest? Of course this burden of sweets 

 does not weigh down the clover all at once, the flowers 

 continually renewing the supply as it is removed. 



The small sour-wood tree that grows so abundantly over 

 the mountains of the Carolinas and in other sections of the 

 country yields a rich harvest to the bee, as one bee-keeper 

 experienced v\^hen he obtained twelve hundred pounds of 

 sour-wood honey in one season from his apiary. This 

 honey is dark in color but agreeable in flavor, and the tree 

 is one of the prettiest ornaments of the summer forest 

 with its sprays of white blossoms. Its name is derived 

 from the acid taste of its leaves. 



The large cup-shaped green-and-yellow blossoms of the 

 tulip-tree secrete so much nectar that it can sometimes 

 be dipped out with a spoon, and bees will readily fill their 

 hives with tulip-tree honey alone in the course of a few 

 days. The tree itself is one of the handsomest of forest 

 trees and well worth a place on the lawn. Its light green 

 leaves as they unfold in the early spring on the southern 

 mountains form one of the chief beauties of the landscape. 



The homely but interesting teasel, formerly cultivated 

 for the purpose of carding woollen cloth by means of its spiny 

 heads, affords both honey and water to the bee, the water 

 being collected in cups formed by the bases of the leaves 

 at every joint of the stem and containing from a spoonful 

 to half a pint. 



Some kinds of honey are much more highly esteemed 



