TRANSACTIONS. 267 



time they sip it from the flowers till it is deposited in the 

 comb. The honey gathered by bees from all kinds of fruit 

 trees, such as the apple, pear, plum and cherry, and also the 

 wild cherry, tastes precisely as the blossoms smell, or as 

 the leaves of the blossoms taste when chewed in the mouth. 

 Buckwheat honey is generally thin and watery, and of a 

 very poor quality. The weather has a great influence on 

 buckwheat honey as to its being thin or very thin. I never 

 saw any very thick which was gathered from the raspberry 

 and white clover. Bees gather both honey and pollen at the 

 game time — not always, but often. This fact I have ascer- 

 tained in difi'erent ways. I have watched the bees while in- 

 dustriously at work, and have seen thousands of bees return 

 to the hive with a medium quantity of pollen on their thighs, 

 and their sacks well filled with honey. The pollen was to 

 be seen, and the plump appearance of the abdomen, hanging 

 down as the bees approached the hive, indicated honey 

 within. To be sure of this, I killed several and dissected 

 them, and found their sacks full of honey. To be sure that 

 it was honey, I tasted of it. I tried this several times in 

 the same season, while different kinds of flowers were in 

 blossom, and with precisely the same results. Fruit trees 

 often yield both honey and pollen for awhile, then the hon- 

 ey will disappear while the pollen remains a day or two 

 longer, if the weather is favorable. As to white clover, any 

 man who has common sense knows, or ought to know, that a 

 single head of white clover is exhibitory of all the different 

 stages in progression from the bud to the seed, so well ma- 

 tured that it will germinate, thus giving the bee ample op- 

 portunity to gather 1)0th honey and pollen at the same time, 

 which it often does. The blossoms of the river willow yield 

 both honey and pollen at the same time, but sometimes the 

 honey disajipcars first. Some flowers yield only pollen, and 

 that is of an inferior quality. The dandelion is of tliis class. 

 There is hardly moisture enough in the flower of the dande- 

 lion to enable the bee to knead the pollen into pellets suf- 

 ficiently close to be carried to the hive. 



