| Bul. 1, new series, Div. of Entomology, U. S. Dept. of Agriculture. | Plate VIII. |
Blue Weed or Viper's Bugloss (Echium vulgare). | |
| Bul. 1, new series, Div. of Entomology, U. S. Dept. of Agriculture. | Plate IX. |
Crimson Clover (Trifolium incarnatum). | |
| Bul. 1, new series, Div. of Entomology, U. S. Dept. of Agriculture. | Plate X. |
Alsike Clover (Trifolium hybridum). | |
HONEY AND POLLEN PRODUCING PLANTS.
In the following lists the intention has been merely to indicate the main sources from which our hive bees secure honey and pollen. Anything like a complete enumeration of those plants of the United States visited by hive bees would occupy far too much space for a brief treatise like this. Many plants are therefore omitted which secrete nectar freely but which are abundant only locally; others are left out because they secrete only at rare intervals, or under peculiar conditions, or are visited by bees only when some better honey source fails; others again because, though secreting well and readily yielding their honey or pollen stores to the bees, they are not often present in sufficient numbers in any one locality to enable the bees to add materially to their surplus stores. Such plants are, however, often of great value because they cause the bees to rear brood during intervals between the times of storing surplus honey and thus keep the colonies populous for successive harvests.
Besides the main honey plants it would be easy to name for any locality quite a number of secondary importance which are frequented by honey bees, yet even though the localities were but a few miles apart scarcely any two lists would agree either as to the plants to be included or as to their relative importance. The following honey and pollen producing plants are therefore of wide distribution or of special importance in certain localities.
For convenience separate lists are given for the three sections of the United States made by the parallels of 35° and 40° N. The flora of the western portion of each section differs of course greatly from that of the eastern part of the same section. Only the most important honey yielders among those of local interest in the extreme Southwest and the West have been included in the lists, and the chief range of each has been noted. An effort has been made to indicate by the type the relative importance of the plants as pollen and honey producers.