honey is also secured in the Yazoo Delta, Mississippi. In southern Arkansas holly is one of the major honey plants. It blooms in May, and the flow here, as in Mississippi, is not greatly influenced by the weather. At Buchner colonies store about 40 pounds of honey in spring, most of the surplus coming from holly and black gum. Along the Ouachita River in the southern part of the state holly is the principal honey plant.

Holly is the most widely known of all the species of Ilex, as great quantities of the branches with their bright green leaves and red berries are used for decoration during the Christmas holidays. But there are several species of Ilex with red berries which are liable to be confused with American holly, as they are valuable as honey plants and may attain the size of small trees; but they may be easily distinguished by their smaller leaves, which are never spiny-toothed. The myrtleleaved Ilex (I. myrtifolia) is fairly common in cypress swamps in the wire-grass region of Georgia. It blooms at the same time and usually in the vicinity of the common gallberry, and the honey is believed to be equally good, for the bees gather the nectar most eagerly. The yaupon (I. vomitoria) and the dahoon (I. Cassine) may grow twenty feet or more tall, and in the southern states are helpful in building up colonies in early spring. At Bay City, Texas, yaupon yields a clear honey with a heavy body and a greenish sulphur-yellow color. It has a decidedly bitter taste when first gathered, but this disappears with age. There is a fair yield every other year. In New England the black alder (I. verticillata) is a common shrub in swamps and is much visited by bees. (Fig. 66.)

HOLLYHOCK (Sidalcea malvaeflora). — Checkerbloom. Wild hollyhock grows in profusion along the roadsides and irrigating-ditches and on the plains of southern California, and is an excellent source of nectar in winter, sometimes yielding a small extracting. It also stimulates brood-rearing, if there is warm sunny weather. There are two kinds of flowers, one perfect with a large corolla, the other pistillate with a small corolla.

HONEY LOCUST (Gleditsia triacanthos). — The bloom of the honey locust has the odor of honey and secretes nectar freely; but it does not, as a rule, yield a surplus, and is of far less value than black locust. A honeylike odor is apt to prove misleading as to the quantity of nectar a flower yields, both to bees and beekeepers. A thorny tree with rough bark, pinnate leaves, and small greenish flowers. It grows in rich woods from New York southward to Texas and westward to Nebraska, but it is not abundant. It is cultivated for ornament as an avenue tree, and as a high windbreak.

HONEY PLANT, ROCKY MOUNTAIN. — See Rocky Mountain Bee Plant.

HONEYSUCKLE (Lonicera). — The flowers of the different species of honeysuckle are nectariferous, but are adapted chiefly to bumblebees and humming-birds. The bush honeysuckles, among which the Tartarian honeysuckle is common in cultivation, hear bumblebee-flowers, from which honeybees are able to gather little except pollen. The blossoms of the familiar climbing honeysuckle of the garden (L. Periclymenum) are adapted to hawk-moths, and those of the trumpet honeysuckle (L. sempervirens) to humming-birds. Both have the nectar far beyond the reach of honeybees.

HOP-TREE (Ptelea trifoliata). — A shrub with small greenish white flowers in level-topped clusters. The odor is disagreeable. Honeybees are frequent visitors for nectar, and many other bees and insects resort to the bloom. It is reported of value in Texas. In the absence of insects the hop-tree is self-sterile. The bitter fruit is used as a substitute for hops. Also called shrubby trefoil, wingseed, and water-ash.

HORSE-CHESTNUT (Aesculus Hippocastanum). — A bumblebee flower, but honeybees gather both pollen and nectar. From the California buckeye (Aesculus californica) as much as 25 pounds of honey per colony has been obtained; but under certain conditions this honey may be poisonous to the bees, as told in Circular 301, Agricultural Experiment Station, Berkeley, Calif. See Buckeye.