Flowering Plants/Trees Back to Honey Plants
This is an extremely valuable honey plant. Lovell devotes 8 full pages to it in his book and Pellett gives the plant 9 full pages in his book. We must limit our description. There are several species grown in the United States (Yellow Sweet Clover - Melitotus officinalis and White Sweet Clover Melitotus alba). Both are shown in our photographs above. The yellow sweet clover plant blooms in June and is followed several weeks later by white sweet clover. As a field crop, it has been replaced with soy beans in the mid west but is found growing along road sides and in waste fields. It is a biennial. It is used to improve the quality of soil and is still found in vast areas of the Great Plains where a good amount of clover honey is produced. It is wide spread in distribution and we have not singled out any particular area for its growth in our map above. It will grow in areas with lime. It grows especially well where other clovers will not.
Description of nectar
The honey is white or nearly white. Nectar is secreted freely and if in the vicinity of a sweet clover field, the aroma of the plant will surely get your attention. In the 1940's and 50's, Northwest Ohio (Paulding County was my home), sweet clover was grown for seed and fields of it could be seen for miles. It was not unusual for a hive of honey bees to produce 200 pounds of honey from clover alone.
Description of Pollen
The pollen is yellow to dark yellow in color. The bee collecting pollen in the picture above is clearly carrying a bright yellow pollen in its pollen baskets.
Description of pollen grain
Pollen grains of this family are oval.
To the left is an example of pollen grains from Iowa Geological Survey published in 1930. It is an excellent resource book.
Below is a photograph from a sample of yellow sweet clover pollen grain taken with a 1000X magnification through our own microscope.
