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The Swarm: Plant

There is a very beautiful plant, Cleome Integrifolia, growing wild in the west, and known as the Rocky Mountain Bee Plant, which yields an extraordinary quantity of honey, and a near relative of this, commonly known as the Spider Plant, a native of South America, is not only one of the most beautiful of garden flowers, but one of the most remarkable of honey-producers.

The lovely pink flower clusters with their airy petals and long and slender filaments yield five gallons of nectar to the acre daily, and continue to bloom freely for three months. So vigorous is the life of these plants that the nectary can easily be seen filling up after it has been licked out by a bee, and the nectar is often elaborated in such abundance that it streams out on the ground.

However, it is not necessary to go so far afield for plants yielding large store of nectar, as the flowers in our gardens, the nasturtiums, the honey-suckles, and many others, produce an amount that is readily observable, and all know of the drop hidden at the bottom of each floret of clover. Both red and white clover yield a surprising amount of honey of superior delicacy, and one bee-keeper reports having obtained sixty-six pounds of clover honey in three days from one hive.

Linden or lime-tree nectar is poured forth in such inviting abundance that during the period of bloom the trees resound like enormous bee-hives, for every bee within flying distance is on hand to fill its little "bottle," as Butler calls its honey-sac, and even on moonlight nights the trees have been known to breathe forth the hum of industry. The viper's bugloss, or "blue thistle," which is not a Honey thistle at all, but belongs to the Borage Family, often yields two hundred pounds to a colony, of a honey as clear and delicate as that of white clover.

It is stated that sweet clover, the dried leaves of which our grandmothers put in their linen closets, yields from four to five hundred pounds of honey to the acre. Who would imagine, looking over a waste of sweet clover, any such possible harvest? Of course this burden of sweets does not weigh down the clover all at once, the flowers continually renewing the supply as it is removed.

The small sour-wood tree that grows so abundantly over the mountains of the Carolinas and in other sections of the country yields a rich harvest to the bee, as one bee-keeper experienced when he obtained twelve hundred pounds of sour-wood honey in one season from his apiary. This honey is dark in color but agreeable in flavor, and the tree is one of the prettiest ornaments of the summer forest with its sprays of white blossoms. Its name is derived from the acid taste of its leaves.

The large cup-shaped green-and-yellow blossoms of the tulip-tree secrete so much nectar that it can sometimes be dipped out with a spoon, and bees will readily fill their hives with tulip-tree honey alone in the course of a few days. The tree itself is one of the handsomest of forest trees and well worth a place on the lawn. Its light green leaves as they unfold in the early spring on the southern mountains form one of the chief beauties of the landscape. The homely but interesting teasel, formerly cultivated for the purpose of carding woollen cloth by means of its spiny heads, affords both honey and water to the bee, the water being collected in cups formed by the bases of the leaves at every joint of the stem and containing from a spoonful to half a pint.

Some kinds of honey are much more highly esteemed than others. Linden honey, for instance, has been famous from antiquity, and is still esteemed wherever found, Lithuania in Russia being particularly noted for its limetree honey. When first gathered it is somewhat crude and with a slight turpentine taste, that disappears as the honey mellows with age.

White clover honey, gathered by the bees in preference to almost any other, is by many considered the most perfect of all honey. Sweet clover honey has a more decided but very delicious flavor, and is the main honey-yielding plant in some sections of the country.

Each part of the country has its own honey, and while in the northern States white clover, linden, and buckwheat afford the principal supply, farther south a great store comes from the viper's bugloss, which was brought to this country from Europe and formerly cultivated in gardens, but is now a weed over large areas in the South, its beautiful blue flower-clusters yielding a clear, colorless, and delicate honey.

Yet farther south the bees gather tribute from the cotton fields, storing tons of clear honey in pure white combs, fit food for the houris, as thinks the Sultan of Turkey, who has cotton honey supplied to his seraglio.

Yet farther south the orange blossoms yield a delectable and abundant sweet, while the mangroves and palmettoes are not far behind in excellence.

The best honey in Persia, Florida, and the Island of Malta, though these countries are widely separated, comes from the orange blossoms, which yield a valued honey wherever they bloom. In the far West the white sage competes with the thyme of Mount Hymettus in the excellence of its honey, although honey from all members of the Sage Family is somewhat Honey strong, and like linden honey is improved by standing uncovered for awhile. Pliny says: - "The honey of Attica is generally looked upon as the best in the world; for which reason it is that the thyme of that country has been transplanted."

In western New York, where catnip is grown in large fields, the honey retains a slight but evident flavor which tells its origin even when purchased half across the continent.

Each kind of flower gives its characteristic flavor to the honey, though the strong-flavored honeys are generally mellowed by time, the cruder principles probably escaping in volatile oils.

In Wales, where leeks and onions are raised in large quantities for seed, and thus allowed to blossom, the honey partakes of the flavor, not to its advantage; and every one knows the strong flavor of the buckwheat honey, a prime favorite with some, and concerning which Burroughs speaks most appreciatively. "It is a homely old stanza current among bee folk that - A swarm of bees in May Is worth a load of hay; A swarm of bees in June Is worth a silver spoon; But a swarm in July Is not worth a fly.' "A swarm in May is indeed a treasure: it is like an April baby, sure to thrive, and will very likely itself send out a swarm a month or two later; but a swarm in July is not to be despised; it will store no clover or linden honey for the ' grand seignior and the ladies of his seraglio,' but plenty of the rank and wholesome poor man's nectar, the suntanned product of the plebeian buckwheat. Buckwheat honey is the black sheep in this white flock; but there is spirit and character in it. It lays hold of the taste in no equivocal manner, especially when at a winter breakfast it meets its fellow, the russet buckwheat cake. Bread with honey to cover it from the same stalk is double good fortune. It is not black, either, but nut-brown, and belongs to the same class of goods as Herrick's 'Nut-brown mirth and russet wit.' How the bees love it! and they bring the delicious odor of the blooming plant to the hive with them, so that in the moist, warm twilight the apiary is redolent with the perfume of buckwheat."