ALFALFA 
the United States. Kansas with an acre¬ 
age of nearly a million acres is in advance 
of every other State. Tn the valley of the 
Platte River, Nebraska, where irrigation is 
possible, beekeepirig is almost wholly de¬ 
pendent on alfalfa. Rut where it is grown 
without irrigation the yield varies greatly 
in different years. The surplus comes 
chiefly, from the second crop of bloom 
which opens in July. Sufficient rain in 
May will cause a vigorous growth of the 
plant and ensure a bountiful supply of 
nectar; but during a very rainy season 
little nectar is gathered. The first crop 
blooms in June and the third in August. 
Around Sutherland on the Platte River 
there is a large acreage of irrigated alfalfa 
and sweet clover, and a good opening for 
several apiaries. On the Republican River 
in the southern portion of the State alfalfa 
is the most important source of honey, but 
a crop is not secured evei'y year. 
In Kansas alfalfa is nectarless or nearly 
so in the eastern rain belt. In tbe country 
around Topeka bees work on the bloom 
occasionally. An old resident says that 
one of his neighbors lias fields of alfalfa 
18 years old, but that he has never seen a 
bee on the bloom, nor a pound of alfalfa 
honey produced in eastern Kansas, altho 
he has lived there 35 years. The alfalfa 
belt in the central portion of the State 
occupies six tiers of counties and is about 
160 miles in width. Alfalfa is most de¬ 
pendable in the valleys of the rivers and 
smaller streams, where immense crops of 
forage are harvested from three or four 
cuttings. If the long taproots can reach 
water at a depth of not more than 10 feet, 
the bloom will yield nectar during the en¬ 
tire season. On high ground alfalfa yields 
only after showers. In Jewell County 
during droughts it is reported to fail en¬ 
tirely. Tn the valley of the Arkansas 
River the surplus is gathered from alfalfa, 
sweet clover, and heartsease. Good crops 
are obtained except in very dry or very 
wet seasons., In Oklahoma alfalfa is a 
dependable honey plant under the same 
conditions as have been described in Kan¬ 
sas. It yields nectar most freely near the 
rivers and in soils where underground 
water can be reached by the roots. Both 
in Kansas and Oklahoma the future of 
beekeeping will depend largely on the in¬ 
crease of the acreage of sweet clover. 
In Texas, which reported 55,000 acres 
of alfalfa, it is of value as a honey plant 
only in the irrigated areas of the Trans- 
Pecos region. In the vicinity of El Paso 
there has not been a failure in the crop 
of honey for 10 years, but at Barstow, 
Ward Co., on the Pecos River, it is not 
always dependable. 
In each of the remaining 11 States 
there is an immense acreage of alfalfa— 
the total amounting to 2,445,000 acres. Tn 
general, the crop is always reliable, failure 
being due more often to bad management 
on the part of beekeepers than to non¬ 
secretion of nectar by the bloom. The 
225,000 acres of irrigated alfalfa in Mon¬ 
tana are found chiefly along the Yellow¬ 
stone River and its southern tributaries, 
•especially in Yellowstone County. The 
land away from the rivers is a barren 
waste. The larger part of the 170,000 
acres of alfalfa in Wyoming are in Big 
Horn County in the northern part of the 
State and in the southeast comer around 
Laramie. Immense crops of alfalfa honey 
are produced; but many colonies are lost 
in winter, as they are given no additional 
protection from the cold. 
In the eastern section of Colorado, oc¬ 
cupied by the Great Plains, beekeeping is 
restricted to the valleys of the South 
Platte and Arkansas rivers, where there are 
1,300,000 acres of irrigable land. In Lari- 
mie, Boulder, and Jefferson counties an 
immense surplus of alfalfa honey is pro¬ 
duced nearly every year. There are rela¬ 
tively few bees in the Rocky Mountains in 
the center of the State. Excellent crops 
of honey are also obtained on the Western 
Slope, which is less densely stocked with 
bees than the Great Plains. In this sec¬ 
tion beekeeping is wholly dependent on 
alfalfa, as sweet clover grows only along 
the ditches. Colorado reported 509,000 
acres of alfalfa. In New Mexico in the 
valleys of the Rio Grande, San Juan, and 
Pecos rivers, there were 103,000 acres of 
alfalfa. 
Eight-tenths of the irrigated land in 
Idaho lies in the valley of the Snake River 
where there are 310,000 acres of alfalfa. 
The largest surplus of lionev is produced 
in the Boise Valley and in the vicinity of 
