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BEES AND PLANTS
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honey, and the grower of small fruits may well add bees to his farm as a source of profit.

GARDEN FLOWERS

Most of the blooms in flower gardens, as well as vegetable gardens, are worked by the bees. Mignonette is a valuable honey-plant, as it blossoms for a long time. Marjoram, thyme and sage give rich, spicy honey. The sunflower is also a good honeyplant.

WILD FLOWERS AND WEEDS

We shall never forget our profound amazement when we saw, for the first time, in a narrow valley of the Mojave Desert a great city of white bee-hives. Nothing in that desolate landscape could we discern that bore the slightest resemblance to a honey-plant. The gray sage-brush which grew everywhere looked to us about as promising for honey-production as so much slag from a furnace; and yet this sage-brush of the desert gives the bees the best of pasturage. The bloom begins down in the valley and climbs the mountain side slowly, thus giving bloom for a long period.

There are two species of sage that yield honey, the white and the black, or button sage. They are allied to the mints, which are generally good honeyplants. We learned to care much for the spicy sage-honey. A professor of Greek, who was for some time in the American school at Athens, tells us that the sage-honey is very similar in flavour to