POISONOUS HONEY 
657 
Most officials seem to doubt the existence 
of this honey.” 
A jar of poisonous honey was obtained 
from Blowing Rock, Watauga County, in 
the Blue Ridge Mountains, which when 
gathered two years ago was very poison¬ 
ous. The extracted honey in the jar was 
dark brown, and had a pronounced dis¬ 
agreeable or nauseous odor, and a nauseous 
flavor. A small teaspoonful produced 
slight nausea, headache, and burning in 
the throat. In large quantity the effect 
would doubtless be serious. It is difficult 
to understand how such a poor honey could 
find a market, or even be eaten by the bee¬ 
keeper producing it. The comb was light- 
colored and did not differ in any way from 
the average comb. The honey was stated 
to have been gathered not from mountain 
laurel, but from Leucothoe, probably from 
mountain Leucothoe (L. recurva). A hon¬ 
eybee is said never to have been seen on 
mountain laurel' in this locality. In the 
absence of cai-eful observations the source 
of this honey remains in doubt, but it 
should receive thoro investigation. 
Numerous letters of inquiry were sent to 
beekeepers living in western North Caro¬ 
lina. With two exceptions they all replied 
that they had never personally obtained 
any poisonous honey, but the majority had 
heard that in the mountains it was occa¬ 
sionally gathered from the flowers of the 
mountain, laurel. According to one report 
bees never visit the flowers of mountain 
laurel except in years, when there is an 
extreme dearth of honey. Two other bee¬ 
keepers state that they have never seen a 
honeybee on the blossoms of this bush, and 
one of them adds that the poisonous honev 
comes from the genus Leucothoe, a shrub 
2 to 4 feet tall. In New England the close¬ 
ly allied species of Kalmia, sheep laurel, 
or lambkill, ( Kalmia angustifolia) yields 
very little nectar and is only occasionally 
visited by bees, mostly solitary bees. 
Kalm, the Swedish traveler, after whom 
the genus Kalmia is named, says that if 
domestic animals eat the leaves of the laur¬ 
els they fall sick, and in some cases die, 
but that they are harmless to wild animals. 
But Dr. Jacob Bigelow, Professor of Ma¬ 
teria Medica at Harvard University, States 
in American, Medical Botany that he re¬ 
peatedly chewed and swallowed a green 
leaf of the largest size without perceiving 
the least effect in consequence. A powder 
made from the leaves recently dried in 
doses from ten to twenty grams produced 
no perceptible effect. The taste of the 
leaves is perfectly mild and mucilaginous. 
Dr. Bigelow believed that the noxious effect 
of the leaves on young domestic animals is 
due to their indigestible quality. 
The reports are so indefinite, and there 
is so much uncertainty as to whether bees 
ever store much honey from the mountain 
laurel that it is impossible to reach any sat¬ 
isfactory conclusion. Evidently the moun¬ 
tain laurel as a honey plant should be sci¬ 
entifically investigated by a flower ecolo¬ 
gist. 
In Georgia and Florida the yellow jes¬ 
samine ( Gelsemium semperrirens) is very 
abundant and bees visit the yellow blos¬ 
soms from February to March. But it is 
doubtful if a surplus of jessamine honey 
is ever obtained. It is useful chiefly for 
Yellow jessamine. 
spring stimulation. According to one pub¬ 
lished statement the uncapped honey is 
poisonous and has even produced death, 
but the capped honey is perfectly whole¬ 
some. According to E. G. Baldwin no in- 
