BUCKWHEAT 
151 
Honey for the bees, seed for harvest, fertilizer for the ground—buckwheat should be planted extensively. 
only a few bees can be found in the fields. 
Probably no beekeeper has ever had a 
more extended experience with buckwheat 
as a honey plant that E. W. Alexander. 
He observed that the secretion of nectar 
varied greatly with the temperature and 
the condition of the Aveather. He says: 
“Several years ago I kept nearly 200 
colonies in a location where there Avere 
barely 100 acres of buckwheat within reach 
of my bees, that is, within four miles or in 
a circle eight miles in diameter. Still Avith 
this small acreage it Avas no uncommon 
thing to harvest a surplus of 15 to 20 
pounds of fine buckwheat section honey 
per colony. As a result I became very 
anxious to keep bees in a buckwheat loca¬ 
tion, where thousands of acres were raised 
annually, so I moved to Delanson, N. Y. 
But I soon found out to my soitoav that 
the amount of bloom had but little bear¬ 
ing on the amount of surplus I obtained, 
and that in this respect buckwheat was no 
exception to other floAvers. It does its best 
when we have quite cool nights followed 
by a clear sky and a bright hot sun with 
little or no wind; then from about 9 
o'clock in the morning until 2 in the after¬ 
noon it secretes nectar very fast. We sel¬ 
dom find a bee on it much earlier or later 
in the day. 
“A few years ago during our August 
harvest, when our bees had at least 1,500 
acres of buckwheat bloom to work on, and 
Avere bringing in honey very fast, a heavy 
shower came down from the north about 
2 P. M., which caused the mercury to drop 
21 degrees in less than half an hour. Then 
this low temperature, Avith Avindy cloudy 
Aveather, lasted some 11 days, during which 
time the bees destroyed large quantities of 
brood, for there was no nectar in the Aoav- 
ers and they were ready to rob any hive 
that was opened. 
“I never saw the buckwheat harvest stop 
so suddenly, with so little cause, as it did 
in August, 1906. From the morning of 
the 21st to the night of the 24th, the bees 
brought in the honey very fast. Our hive 
on scales averaged a gain of about 8 
pounds a day, and we extracted a tankful 
of a little more than tAvo tons each day for 
four consecutive days, and yet our men all 
agreed there Avas more honey in the apiary 
each night than there Avas in the morning. 
But on the night of the 24th we had a 
