74 
FOLLOWING THE BEE LINE 
blooms later, it also furnishes a pleasant honey, light 
in color and of a rather greenish shade. To my taste, 
blueberry honey is the honey par excellence of New 
England. Clover honey producers from Vermont 
may take exception to this statement, but neverthe¬ 
less I do not retract it. 
Honey varies in color and flavor to a marked de¬ 
gree, according to the flowers from which it came. 
The most strongly contrasted honeys of which I 
know are sage honey, very light-colored and very 
mild in flavor; and buckwheat honey, correspond¬ 
ingly dark—almost black—and strong in taste. 
Where there are great quantities of certain honey 
plants in bloom, the resultant honey can be quite cor¬ 
rectly called clover or sage or orange bloom, or what¬ 
ever it may be. However, in many localities the 
blooming time of different nectar-producing plants 
overlap and there is a blend of two or more. Usually 
the flavor of one predominates, but not invariably. 
It is all a matter of taste as to which is best. Orange 
blossom honey is golden and delicious; clover and 
alfalfa honey are favorites in the Middle West; buck¬ 
wheat honey has its adherents in New York and 
Pennsylvania; clethra honey—water-white and tast¬ 
ing as a water lily smells—was Dallas Lore Sharp’s 
best honey in southeastern Massachusetts. In many 
