bees and beekeepingPast & ^Present:Summefr Cotton Honey Production

摘要

When the spring nectar flow gets zapped by a late frost, flooded out by relentless rains, or crunched dry under a cloudless sky, I see fall sugar bills robbing my bank account to zero. Then visions of a huge snow-white cotton field soothe my agony (see Figure 1).That grand sea of white, so striking on a bright sunny day, forms from millions of split-open cotton bolls, each dropping out a wad of pristine white lint. Each of those bolls was once a flower (see Figure 2). One morning, sometime back in the summer, each of those flowers bloomed, showing off its large white petals, before closing, wilting and falling to the ground. To me, a vast field of cotton bolls bursting with white lint is a flower record of the plants blooming over the summer (see Figure 3).