HONEYBEES AND HONEY PRODUCTION. 
57 
throughout all of the western Mountain and Plateau States 
and the central and northern plains, along irrigation ditches 
and in waste lands, wherever moisture is sufficient. It is 
also common in all of the Central States eastward to the 
Atlantic coast, bordering the steam and wagon roads, and 
is an important honey plant in many sections there and in 
the black lands of Alabama and Mississippi, especially where 
cultivated as a forage plant. 
The mountain sages of California produce a type of honey 
of much importance commercially and by common consent 
one of the finest of all in color (white), density, and flavor. 
The sage honeys possess, in addition to other virtues, the 
important one of not granulating readily. Honeys from the 
desert plants other than sage are as a rule good; many are 
excellent and rarely are they of poor quality. 
Orange honey ranks high among the commercial honeys, 
being produced in large quantities in California, and to a less 
extent in Florida, Arizona, and a few of the Gulf Coast 
States. When produced under favorable atmospheric con- 
ditions, as a rule, it is of fine appearance, body, and flavor, 
and is ranked as one of the very best. 
Other sources of favored western honeys are few, but 
among them fireweed, which follows fires on cut-over lands 
in western Washington and Oregon, as well as in the northern 
fringe of the Eastern States, is unexcelled. Vine maple is 
important in Oregon. 
California, the leading honey State, owes its preeminence 
to four principal sources of supply — the alfalfa of the vaUey 
sections, the wild sage and the wild buckwheat shrub of the 
southern hills and moimtains, and the citrus groves. 
Of the Texas crop, second in importance, roughly two- 
fifths is produced in south Texas from the wild horsemint 
and from the mesquite, catsclaw, guajilla, and other desert 
trees and shrubs, a scant fifth in the western section of the 
State beyond the Pecos River from alfalfa and desert plants, 
and most of the remaining two-fifths in the black waxy soil 
belt and the prairies of central Texas, principally from 
cotton, though a considerable quantity is from horsemint 
and some from mesquite. Rattan, huckleberry, and holly 
supplement cotton and horsemint in the eastern part of the 
State. 
