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 2½ 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.
ECONOMIC PLANTS AND TREES FOR CULTIVATION FOR HONEY AND POLLEN.
Filbert bushes, useful for wind-breaks and for their nuts, yield pollen in February and March.
Rape can be grown successfully in the North for pasturage, for green manuring, or for seed, and when permitted to blossom yields considerable pollen and honey. Winter varieties are sown late in the summer or early in the autumn, and blossom in April or May following. This early yield forms an excellent stimulus to brood rearing. Summer or bird rape, grown chiefly for its seed, blossoms about a month after sowing. It does best during the cooler months of the growing season.
Russian or hairy vetch is a hardy leguminous plant of great value for forage and use in green manuring. The blossoms appear early in the season, and, where there is any lack in early pollen, especially in northern and cool regions, this vetch will be found of great value to the bees.