American Honey Plants - Together with Those Which are of Special Value to the Beekeeper as Sources of Pollen , livre ebook

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292 pages

English

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This volume contains a comprehensive guide to the honey plants of America, together with information on those which are of special value to the beekeeper as sources of pollen. Complete with detailed descriptions and helpful illustrations for each plant mentioned, this text will be of considerable value to those with an interest in the subject. It makes for a great addition to bee-keeping and honey-related literature. The chapters of this book include: Honey Plant Regions, The Minor Plants, Alabama, Alaska, Alberta, Alder, Field Culture, Apocynum, Apricot, Arbutus, Arizona, Aster, Aspen, Astragalus, Azealea, Balloon Vine, Barberry, Basil, Basswood, Bastard-Pennyroyal, Bachelor’s Button, etcetera. This text was originally published in 1920, and we are proud to be republishing it now, complete with a new introduction on bee-keeping.

Sujets

Agronomie

Agronomy for Sustainable Development

Agriculture

Engineering

Technology

Beekeeping

Sciences et techniques

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Publié par	Read Books Ltd.
Date de parution	01 décembre 2020
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781528764971
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	6 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0500€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

American Honey Plants
Together With Those Which Are of Special Value to the Beekeeper as Sources of Pollen

BY FRANK C. PELLETT
Author Beginner s Bee Book. Productive Beekeeping, Practical Queen Rearing, Etc.

155 Illustrations
Copyright 2013 Read Books Ltd.
This book is copyright and may not be reproduced or copied in any way without the express permission of the publisher in writing
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Contents
Bee Keeping
Dedication
Foreword
American Honey Plants
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
XYZ
Index
Bee Keeping
Beekeeping (or apiculture, from Latin: apis bee ) is quite simply, the maintenance of honey bee colonies. A beekeeper (or apiarist) keeps bees in order to collect their honey and other products that the hive produces (including beeswax, propolis, pollen, and royal jelly), to pollinate crops, or to produce bees for sale to other beekeepers. A location where bees are kept is called an apiary or bee yard. Depictions of humans collecting honey from wild bees date to 15,000 years ago, and efforts to domesticate them are shown in Egyptian art around 4,500 years ago. Simple hives and smoke were used and honey was stored in jars, some of which were found in the tombs of pharaohs such as Tutankhamun.
The beginnings of bee domestication are uncertain, however early evidence points to the use of hives made of hollow logs, wooden boxes, pottery vessels and woven straw baskets. On the walls of the sun temple of Nyuserre Ini (an ancient Egyptian Pharo) from the Fifth Dynasty, 2422 BCE, workers are depicted blowing smoke into hives as they are removing honeycombs. Inscriptions detailing the production of honey have also been found on the tomb of Pabasa (an Egyptian nobleman) from the Twenty-sixth Dynasty (c. 650 BCE), depicting pouring honey in jars and cylindrical hives. Amazingly though, archaeological finds relating to beekeeping have been discovered at Rehov, a Bronze and Iron Age archaeological site in the Jordan Valley, Israel. Thirty intact hives, made of straw and unbaked clay, were discovered in the ruins of the city, dating from about 900 BCE. The hives were found in orderly rows, three high, in a manner that could have accommodated around 100 hives, held more than 1 million bees and had a potential annual yield of 500 kilograms of honey and 70 kilograms of beeswax!
It wasn t until the eighteenth century that European understanding of the colonies and biology of bees allowed the construction of the moveable comb hive so that honey could be harvested without destroying the entire colony. In this Enlightenment period, natural philosophers undertook the scientific study of bee colonies and began to understand the complex and hidden world of bee biology. Preeminent among these scientific pioneers were Swammerdam, Ren Antoine Ferchault de R aumur, Charles Bonnet and the Swiss scientist Francois Huber. Huber was the most prolific however, regarded as the father of modern bee science , and was the first man to prove by observation and experiment that queens are physically inseminated by drones outside the confines of hives, usually a great distance away. Huber built improved glass-walled observation hives and sectional hives that could be opened like the leaves of a book. This allowed inspecting individual wax combs and greatly improved direct observation of hive activity. Although he went blind before he was twenty, Huber employed a secretary, Francois Burnens, to make daily observations, conduct careful experiments, and keep accurate notes for more than twenty years.
Early forms of honey collecting entailed the destruction of the entire colony when the honey was harvested. The wild hive was crudely broken into, using smoke to suppress the bees, the honeycombs were torn out and smashed up - along with the eggs, larvae and honey they contained. The liquid honey from the destroyed brood nest was strained through a sieve or basket. This was destructive and unhygienic, but for hunter-gatherer societies this did not matter, since the honey was generally consumed immediately and there were always more wild colonies to exploit. It took until the nineteenth century to revolutionise this aspect of beekeeping practice - when the American, Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth made practical use of Huber s earlier discovery that there was a specific spatial measurement between the wax combs, later called the bee space , which bees do not block with wax, but keep as a free passage. Having determined this bee space (between 5 and 8 mm, or 1/4 to 3/8 ), Langstroth then designed a series of wooden frames within a rectangular hive box, carefully maintaining the correct space between successive frames, and found that the bees would build parallel honeycombs in the box without bonding them to each other or to the hive walls.
Modern day beekeeping has remained relatively unchanged. In terms of keeping practice, the first line of protection and care - is always sound knowledge. Beekeepers are usually well versed in the relevant information; biology, behaviour, nutrition - and also wear protective clothing. Novice beekeepers commonly wear gloves and a hooded suit or hat and veil, but some experienced beekeepers elect not to use gloves because they inhibit delicate manipulations. The face and neck are the most important areas to protect (as a sting here will lead to much more pain and swelling than a sting elsewhere), so most beekeepers wear at least a veil. As an interesting note, protective clothing is generally white, and of a smooth material. This is because it provides the maximum differentiation from the colony s natural predators (bears, skunks, etc.), which tend to be dark-coloured and furry. Most beekeepers also use a smoker -a device designed to generate smoke from the incomplete combustion of various fuels. Smoke calms bees; it initiates a feeding response in anticipation of possible hive abandonment due to fire. Smoke also masks alarm pheromones released by guard bees or when bees are squashed in an inspection. The ensuing confusion creates an opportunity for the beekeeper to open the hive and work without triggering a defensive reaction.
Such practices are generally associated with rural locations, and traditional farming endeavours. However, more recently, urban beekeeping has emerged; an attempt to revert to a less industrialized way of obtaining honey by utilizing small-scale colonies that pollinate urban gardens. Urban apiculture has undergone a renaissance in the first decade of the twenty-first century, and urban beekeeping is seen by many as a growing trend; it has recently been legalized in cities where it was previously banned. Paris, Berlin, London, Tokyo, Melbourne and Washington DC are among beekeeping cities. Some have found that city bees are actually healthier than rural bees because there are fewer pesticides and greater biodiversity. Urban bees may fail to find forage, however, and homeowners can use their landscapes to help feed local bee populations by planting flowers that provide nectar and pollen. As is evident from this short introduction, Bee-Keeping is an incredibly ancient practice. We hope the current reader is inspired by this book to be more bee aware , whether that s via planting appropriate flowers, keeping bees or merely appreciating! Enjoy.

Summer s last stand in the author s wild garden at Atlantic, Iowa. Masses of white snakeroot in bloom in October.
To my indulgent parents, who early encouraged me in my passion for the study of Nature, this book is affectionately dedicated.
FOREWORD
In the first volume of American Bee Journal, published in 1861, appears a plea for the publication of a volume devoted to the honey flora of America. In numerous instances since that time, writers have mentioned the great need of a work of this kind. In common with other students of beekeeping, the author came to feel this lack in our beekeeping literature. This book is an attempt to fill that need. It is to be expected that the first work on this great subject will overlook many things which should have been included and that numerous errors should creep in. In an attempt to gather the desired material, the author has visited the important beekeeping regions from the Atlantic Coast to California and from Canada to Florida and Texas. Careful notes have been made of the honey plants of each section as indicated by the many beekeepers with whom the author has come in contact. To this multitude of beekeepers who have thus assisted by furnishing notes of this kind the author is greatly indebted.
The literature of beekeeping has been carefully examined for references to honey plants, and hundreds of quotations appear in the text. The few bulletins which have appeared on the subject have been quoted freely, as well as similar material appearing in the bee magazines
The illustrations are for the most part from the author s original photographs, although a number have been borrowed from the American Bee Journal, which appeared in that publication, from John H. Lovell, Homer Mathewson, J. M. Buchanan, M. C. Richter, C. D. Stuart, Florida Photographic Concern, Wesley Foster, W. A. Pryal, and some others, the identity of the originator of which are lost.
Since most of the readers of this book will be men who are not accusnomed to botanical classification, it has been thought best to treat each plant under the name by which it is most widely known, giving other names as cross references, and to treat all in alphabetical order. Numerous related subjects whic