Camping and woodcraft - Scoutmastercg.com

BEE HUNTING 3b,one tree. Bees work with great zeal where thereis a good supply of nectar, and will fill a hive in ashort time.Basswood bloom may be placed at the head ofhoney-producing plants. The apiarist, Root, saysthat during a period of t^venty-t^vo years he neverknew basswood to fail to yield nectar, the shortestseason yielding for three days, and the longesttwenty-nine. In one of his hives the bees stored 66pounds of basswood honey in three days. Tenpounds a day was the best recorded from clover.John Burroughs has stated that there is no differencein flavor between wild honey and tame. Ofcourse there is no difference in regions where wildand tame bees gather nectar from the same sources;but in the wilderness, where bees can forage onlyon the blossoms of wild plants and trees, with noaccess to fields and orchards, the honey has a distinctflavor, or flavors, of its own, as different from thatof commercial honey as the flavor of pure, oldfashionedmaple sugar is from that of the modernadulterated or "refined" article. To my taste, thehoney of the wilderness is as much to be preferredas is the honest, kettle-boiled sugar of "the bush."The bouquet of honey varies, of course, accordingto the kind of nectar gathered by its makers. Theminty flavor of the linden is quite distinct from sourwood.Anyone can tell buckwheat honey fromthat which comes from the clover field. As a rule,wild honey has a pungent taste, not so cloyinglysweet as tame honey, and nearly always it is darkercolored, even if the hive is new.Honey gathered from the bloom of rhododendronor mountain laurel, or from the catalpa or catawbatiees, is more or less poisonous to human beings.Root says that it causes symptoms similar to thoseexhibited by men who are dead drunk; or, in lessviolent cases, a tingling all over, indistinct vision(caused by dilation of the pupils), an empty, dizzyfeeling of the head ,and an intense nausea that isnot relieved by vomiting.The effects may not wear