INTERRELATION OF BEES AND PLANTS
HONEY-FLOWERS
The facts revealed by science are not always beautiful, however
interesting they may be. But the discovery of the interrelation of
flowers and insects, that partnership which has existed so long that
it has modified both partners, seems to belong to the realm of art or
poetry rather than to that of science. Since plants must needs spend
their lives where they are developed from seeds, they may not roam
abroad like animals to seek their mates. But this is a difficulty which
they readily overcome, through sending their messages by the uneasy,
flying insects; and of all these messengers, the bee is surely the
flowers’ favourite. Its fuzzy body, admirably adapted to be a pollen
brush, its swift wings and its sedulous attention to business, all tend
to make it the most important of the flower-partners. Thus, especially
for the bee, have thousands of flower species developed nectar, in
pockets placed cunningly to entice her to take upon herself a pollen
load. And for countless ages the flowers have painted their petals
various hues and shed on the atmosphere their perfume, to advertise to
the bee-world that they had pollen and nectar to spare.
This partnership has naturally modified the insects less than the
flowers, as the latter were obliged to develop innumerable devices for
winning attention from their messengers; naturally also the insects
have been more largely modified in their mouth-parts and appliances
for carrying pollen, than in other directions. Their habits have also
been modified in a measure, and the bee has in some mysterious way been
persuaded to work on one kind of blossom at a time. The poetic reproach
that the bee is a heartless rover, rifling the lily of sweets only to
desert her for the rose, is as unjust as it is untrue. Repeatedly have
we watched a bee at work in a bed of pinks. Though clover and other
blossoms were near by, she passed methodically from pink to pink, and
naught tempted her to fickleness. That the bees use pollen for bread,
is a part of the bargain; for the flowers grow it in plenty for both
themselves and their partners.
Each species of “honey-plant” has developed its own special device for
securing the services of bees to carry its pollen; and no study is more
interesting than the unravelling of these flower secrets. Even the
novice may do this by asking the flower these three questions: “Where
is your nectar?” “Where is your pollen?” “What is the path the bees
must follow to get to the nectar?” For ready and accurate answers to
such questions, the flowers are not to be surpassed; and if there is
any doubtful point, the bees are ready to help elucidate it. There are
so many flowers that have become the special partners of the bees that
it is not within the scope of this book to make an adequate list. Some
of the more important are the flowers of trees, and some of farm crops;
some bloom in gardens and some are mere weeds.
TREES
Fruit trees, when in blossom, give much pollen and honey at a time when
these are greatly needed by the bees for rearing brood.
Peach, pear, apricot, plum and especially apple trees, when in bloom
are encompassed about with the happy chorus of busy and grateful
bees; and no other creatures can so successfully vocalise blissful
contentment as they. Many careful experiments have proved beyond
doubt that the help of bees is necessary for securing the pollination
requisite to produce good crops of fruit. The wise and successful
fruit-grower recognises this fact and, mindful of his true interests,
does not spray his fruit trees with poisons while they are in
blossom, lest he thereby kill his friends, the bees. Moreover, to use
arsenical sprays, at such a time, is injurious to the petals and the
fruit-producing organs of the flowers; and it is also too early to
spray successfully against the codlin moth. In many states, legislation
forbids the spraying of poisons during fruit-tree bloom, because it is
a useless and wanton destruction of the bees.
Some time since great injustice was done the bees through the
accusation that they punctured the ripe fruit for the sake of the
juices. This was the special complaint of grape-growers. Investigations
have proved that bees never puncture the rind of ripe fruit, although
they sometimes are tempted to sip the oozing juices, after the rind is
broken through some other agency.
Even before the fruit-bloom the willows offer a feast to break the fast
of the hungry swarms. Half the winter the pussy-willow stands waiting
in her furs to be ready with her grist of pollen, so that the bees may
make bread during the first warm days of spring. The willows burned
their bridges behind them eons ago and depend almost entirely upon the
bees for fertilisation, since they are diœcious. Some apiarists have
claimed that their bees get no nectar from certain species of willow;
but this could hardly be so if trees of both sexes were present in a
locality; for the staminate flowers offer pollen and the pistillate
flowers give nectar to induce the bees to fetch and carry for them.
The maples are not much behind the willows in offering the bees food
after their winter fast. The bloom of the red maple is regarded by most
bee-keepers as permission from Spring to bring out the bee-hives from
the cellar and tenements. All our common species of maple are very much
visited by the bees.
The locusts often yield large crops of honey, although they vary with
the seasons in this respect. Honey-locust, when in bloom, is covered
with bees.
The tulip tree is one of the most beautiful of our ornamental trees
and it gives a great amount of dark, rich honey. In New York it
blossoms in May and June and, like the locusts, is a great help to the
bees after the fruit-bloom is over. This is a common tree in the woods
of the South and is not rare in Northern forests. It should be planted
even more generally than it is at present, for the sake of the bees.
The basswood, of all honey-producing trees, is the most important
and most beloved by the bees. It blooms in July and only for a brief
season; therefore, it is important that the colonies be strong and
able to make the most of these few precious days of harvest. Basswood
honey has a strong flavour when first gathered. But after it is ripened
and sealed it has a delightful flavour. The way our forests have been
stripped of basswood during the past twenty-five years is nothing
less than heartrending to the bee-keeper; for to him this tree ranks
next to the white clover in importance. Mr. Root had a single colony
take forty-three pounds of honey in three days from basswood, and Mr.
Doolittle had a colony take sixty pounds in the same period. The tree
is beautiful, and might well be used for shade along roadsides and also
in ornamental planting. It grows rapidly; young trees, transplanted
from the woodland, blossom in five or six years thereafter. No
bee-keeper should allow the basswood to be cut on his premises; and he
should grow as many young trees as possible.
[Illustration: PLATE XXVIII
Thorn-apple blossoms.
_Photographs by Ralph W. Curtis_
Wild crab-apple blossoms.]
[Illustration: PLATE XXIX. BUCKWHEAT IN BLOSSOM]
Other honey-producing trees of note are the sourwood (_Oxydendrum
arboreum_) of the South, the guajilla of Texas, the cabbage palmetto of
Florida, and the eucalyptus of California.
The flowers of sumac often yield much nectar and are sedulously worked
by the bees. This picturesque shrub is not properly appreciated
because it is so common. Its foliage is beautiful in the summer and is
brilliant in the fall. Its blossoms, as well as its fruit, conduce to
make it an interesting and ornamental shrub for planting.
HONEY PLANTS WHICH YIELD OTHER VALUABLE CROPS
To raise plants solely for the sake of the honey they produce has not
proved a financial success so far in America. Mr. Root estimates that
it would require 500 acres covered with plants blooming in succession
to keep 100 colonies of bees busy; and, at present, most land here is
worth too much to be put to such use. It is doubtful if artificial
pasturage will ever prove a paying investment in agricultural sections.
However, many apiarists devote some land to honey-gardens, and such
a garden may be a beautiful and interesting place, for many of the
honey-plants are ornamental. Also, many apiarists have introduced
certain honey-weeds on waste land in the vicinity of their apiaries
with excellent results.
Fortunately, many plants very valuable to the agriculturist and
horticulturist are the best honey-producers; and if a farmer has only
twenty colonies of bees, it will pay him to reap one crop from his
land and let his bees reap another.
Of all such plants the clovers are the most important. Not only do they
make the best of forage and hay, but they also help to fertilise and
aërate the soil, and should be a factor in every crop rotation. Clovers
and other _legumes_ have upon their roots nodules filled with bacteria,
which are underground partners of the plant. These bacteria fix the
free nitrogen of the air and leave it in the soil available for plant
food. Red clover is not so great a source of honey as are the other
clovers, since its corolla tubes are so long that usually it is only
worked by bumblebees. But the long-tongued Italians are able to get
considerable honey from red clover at times.
Crimson clover grew as a weed for a long time in America before it
became an important factor in horticulture. It is an annual and its
home is in southern Europe. It thrives best in loose, sandy soils
and is of great value as a cover crop for orchards. It is a good
honey-plant.
Alsike is a perennial and grows in low meadows, from Nova Scotia to
Idaho. Its blossoms look like that of the white clover, except that
they are larger and are tinged with pink. This is a valuable clover for
pasturage, and also for hay, and it stands next to the white clover as
a honey-plant.
The white clover is the very best plant for producing honey in the
United States east of the Rocky Mountains, and the flavour of its
honey is famous the world over. While in hard soil, the white clover
lasts only two or three years, it is perennial on rich, moist lands.
It is a cosmopolitan plant and may be found in almost all regions of
the temperate zones. It is an ideal plant for pastures and should be
established everywhere on land not under the plow. It shows well its
partnership with the bee by turning down its flowerets as soon as they
are fertilised, and leaving those in need of pollen still erect. We
have seen a head of white clover with a single floweret, erect and
white, calling to the bees, while all of its sister flowerets were
deflected and brown.
Among the medics we find the veteran of all clovers, the alfalfa, which
has been under cultivation for twenty centuries, and came to America
with the Spanish invasion. It was established in California in 1854,
and has worked its way eastward. But it is only recently that it has
been practicable to grow it in the East. This has been made possible
by the discovery that it will grow on soil inoculated with its root
bacteria. Alfalfa is a true perennial and may be cut for hay three
times a season, and is of highest value as fodder or forage. It is a
superb honey-plant, furnishing great quantities of light-coloured and
excellent honey. It will support more bees to the acre than any other
plant known. For artificial pasturage it is the most promising of all
honey-plants.
Buckwheat is, in many localities, doubly profitable as a grain and as
a honey-plant; especially is it so in middle and western New York,
where the hills in autumn are made brilliant with great fields of the
wine-red stubble. Buckwheat is usually sown late in the season, often
on ground where oats have already been grown earlier in the year. It
blossoms in August and even in September, and furnishes a wealth of
nectar when there is little to be found elsewhere. The honey made from
buckwheat is dark, reddish brown and brings a lower price in most
markets than do the lighter-coloured varieties. Though it is strong
in flavour, it is preferred by many, and on our table it alternates
with basswood and clover. It has always seemed poetic justice that
the plant which produces buckwheat cakes should produce the honey
to eat with them. The following are the good points of buckwheat as
a crop: It is profitable, the grain always brings a good price; it
grows well on poor soil; it is one of the best agencies for ridding
a field of weeds. There is a certain gameness about buckwheat which
we have always admired and which was thus characterised by a farmer
of our acquaintance: “Buckwheat is a gritty plant; if it can get its
head above ground it will blossom. I have seen it, during dry seasons,
blossom when its stalks were so short that the _bees had to get down on
their hands and knees to gather the honey_.” While this may be putting
the case rather strongly, yet it expresses well the habits of the plant.
Black mustard, rape and turnips all furnish nectar for excellent honey.
The seed of mustard and rape brings a good price, and the root of the
turnip is always valuable.
The blossoms of the red raspberry yield a delicious honey, and the
grower of small fruits may well add bees to his farm as a source of
profit.
GARDEN FLOWERS
Most of the blooms in flower gardens, as well as vegetable gardens,
are worked by the bees. Mignonette is a valuable honey-plant, as it
blossoms for a long time. Marjoram, thyme and sage give rich, spicy
honey. The sunflower is also a good honey-plant.
WILD FLOWERS AND WEEDS
We shall never forget our profound amazement when we saw, for the
first time, in a narrow valley of the Mojave Desert a great city
of white bee-hives. Nothing in that desolate landscape could we
discern that bore the slightest resemblance to a honey-plant. The
gray sage-brush which grew everywhere looked to us about as promising
for honey-production as so much slag from a furnace; and yet this
sage-brush of the desert gives the bees the best of pasturage. The
bloom begins down in the valley and climbs the mountain side slowly,
thus giving bloom for a long period.
There are two species of sage that yield honey, the white and the
black, or button sage. They are allied to the mints, which are
generally good honey-plants. We learned to care much for the spicy
sage-honey. A professor of Greek, who was for some time in the American
school at Athens, tells us that the sage-honey is very similar in
flavour to the famous honey of Hymettus, which is made from thyme.
The horse-mint is a very important honey-plant of the lower Mississippi
Valley and of Texas. Its corolla tubes are so long that only the
Italians and other long-tongued bees can get its honey. Catnip,
motherwort and gill-over-the-ground and gall-berry all furnish an
abundance of nectar.
The blue thistle emigrated to Virginia in colonial times, and now
covers with a heavenly blue thousands of acres of the desolate,
uncultivated, red Virginia soil. It is a great boon to the bees of the
region, as its blossoms creep slowly up its stalks, thus affording
nectar for many weeks. It is related to borage, which is another good
honey-plant.
Spider flower (_Cleome pungens_), the Rocky Mountain bee-plant (_Cleome
integrifolia_), and figwort (_Scrofularia venalis_) have all been
planted by bee-keepers in their honey-gardens, because they give such a
great amount of honey per plant.
During September and early October the bees work busily on the various
species of goldenrod and asters, and gather from them a considerable
amount of honey, which is rich in colour and taste. The two common
species of _Impatiens_ also give the bees good fall pasturage.
Fireweed (_Epilobium angustifolium_) comes wherever forests have been
cleared and burned off. It blooms late and yields a fine quality of
honey. The unlovely Spanish needle (_Coreopsis_) also gives much honey.
The milkweed yields good honey, yet it overdoes the matter by loading
the feet of the bee with its pollen sacs, until the poor messenger dies
of exhaustion under the burden of its message, or dies a prisoner in
the blossom.
The cheerful and ubiquitous dandelion has this much in its favour, that
it is beloved by the bees and often gives them honey and pollen at a
time in the spring when they need it for brood-rearing.
Of all the weeds which will pay the apiarist to establish in waste
places, the most profitable are the mellilots, or sweet clovers, of
which there are two species, the white and the yellow. These are most
beneficent weeds, for they carry nitrogen to the soil like other
clovers, and they are easily exterminated by cultivation, so they are
not to be feared.
Sweet clover in blossom fills the atmosphere of the country road with
perfume, for it is almost everywhere a roadside weed; and, as might be
expected, it is most attractive to the bees. While the honey made from
it is rather strong in flavour, yet it is of good colour, and sells
well. When it is mixed with the honey from other flowers, it adds much
to the excellence of the flavour.