With a small apiary, planting for honey alone certainly can not be made
profitable. Small plats of honey-producing plants are valuable mainly
because they afford an opportunity of observing when and under what
circumstances the bees work on certain blossoms, and for the purpose
of determining what might be depended upon to fill a gap in the honey
resources of a given locality whenever the size of the apiary might
make this a consideration of some importance. Even with a large apiary
probably no case exists in which, in the present condition of the
subject, planting for honey alone would prove profitable. But when
selecting crops for cultivation for other purposes, or shrubs and trees
for planting, the bee keeper should of course choose such as will also
furnish honey at a time when pasturage for his bees would otherwise be
wanting.
As complete a list as possible should be made of the plants and
trees visited by honeybees, and notes should be added as to period
of blossoming, importance of yield, whether honey or pollen or both
of these are collected, quality of the product, etc. If gaps occur
during which no natural forage abounds for the bees, some crop can
usually be selected which will fill the interval, and, while supplying
a continuous succession of honey-yielding blossoms for the bees, will
give in addition a yield of fruit, grain, or forage from the same
land. The novice is warned, however, not to expect too much from a
small area. He must remember that as the bees commonly go 2-1/2 to 3
miles in all directions from the apiary, they thus range over an area
of 12,000 to 18,000 acres, and if but 1 square foot in 100 produces a
honey-yielding plant they still have 120 to 180 acres of pasturage, and
quite likely the equivalent of 30 to 40 acres may be in bloom at one
time within range of the bees. A few acres more or less at such a time
will therefore not make a great deal of difference.
But if coming between the principal crops--especially if the bees, as
is often the case, would otherwise have no pasturage at all--the area
provided for them may be of greater relative importance than the larger
area of natural pasturage; for it frequently occurs that the smaller
part only of the honey produced by the field over which the bees of an
apiary range can be collected by them before it is washed out by rains,
or the liquid portion is evaporated and the blossoms withered, while
a smaller area may be more assiduously visited, and, the nectar being
gathered as fast as secreted, a greater yield per acre may result.
It is further of some importance to fill in such a gap with something
to keep the bees busy, instead of letting them spend their time trying
to rob one another; and, what is probably even more important, the
pasturage thus furnished will keep up brood rearing and comb building
and assist materially in preparing the colonies for the succeeding
honey flow.
There are many plants and trees of economic value, in addition to their
production of honey, which may be utilized in one portion or another of
the United States in the manner indicated. Adaptability to climate and
soil, the periods of honey dearth to be filled in, markets for the crop
produced, etc., must all come in to influence the choice. The following
list includes the more important plants of economic value in this
country which are good honey and pollen yielders. Most of those named
are adapted to a considerable portion of the Union. Except in the case
of plants restricted to the South, the dates given are applicable, in
the main, to middle latitudes.