262 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



the hires or colonies and entirely preventing swarming, moving 

 bees from one place to another, wintering them safely and cheaply, 

 feeding them at such time of the year as is necessary, getting the 

 best results from using pound sections to produce the comb honey in 

 the neatest possible way, or extracting and producing the liquid 

 honey, the method of marketing honey in the most attractive and 

 successful manner, the enemies and diseases of bees, and should 

 recognize these evils and know how to overcome them. There is 

 much more to be said about bee-keeping but this is a synopsis of the 

 points to which I wish to call your attention in this limited address. 



What is honey? Honey is defined by the Pure Food Standard as 

 being the Nectar of Flowers, or the saccharine exudations of plants, 

 gathered, transformed and stored by the honey-bees. Thus it can 

 be seen that if a person should attempt to feed his bees with glucose, 

 sugar, or syrup of any kind, and the bees should store it and cap it 

 like honey, this substance would not be the regular article, and any 

 one could be prosecuted for selling adulterated honey if he should 

 sell that which had ben adulterated by this method. At this time 

 I wish also to take the opportunity to say that there is no such 

 thing as artificial comb-honey and comb-honey can not be made artifi- 

 cially. The National Bee-Keepers' Association has a standing offer 

 of a forfeit of |2,000 to any person who will give them two pounds 

 of comb honey so made that it is not readily detected. I am a mem- 

 ber of their Publication Committee, and it is our duty to dissimi- 

 nate such facts as these, as it is now quite generally but wrongly 

 supposed that honey is generally adulterated by all kinds of sub- 

 stances. 



Honey-producing Plants. — The bee-keepers should know the honey- 

 producing plants of his region, and their dates of yield, in order 

 that he can build up his colonies and get them as strong as possible 

 at the beginning of the important flow of honey, and also in order 

 that he can be prepared for a h,eavy crop by having all apparatus 

 and parts of the hives ready to be put on or changed at any time, 

 without a moment's delay when the bees have filled the super or 

 storage receptacle. The loss of only a few days during the height 

 of the honey flow often means swarming fever and the loss of a 

 swarm or more. Among the first plants in spring we have all the 

 Maples, which do not yield a great deal of honey, but their pollen is 

 very important in feeding the young bees and stimulating the queens 

 to egg-laying. The Box Elder is likeAvise an early pollen-producing 

 plant, and the willows, especially the Pussy Willow, are important 

 in this regard. Where these are found in abundance the bees will 

 increase rapidly and will be in good order by the time for the fruit 

 blossoms. However, the blossoms of the fruits, such as peach, plum, 

 cherry, apple and pear are generally of the greatest value in build- 

 ing up a colony and stimulating the rapid egg-laying of the queen, 

 and thus putting them in good shape for the white clover, which is of 

 greatest importance in our country. It is true that for a short time 

 we have a tremendous flow of flne white honey from the black locust 

 or yellow locust, as it is also called, as I know that this spring some 

 colonies stored as much as twenty pounds of honey in one week. 



Where bass-wood is yet to be found in sufficient quantities, this 

 is one of the most important honey-producing plants of our State, 

 but it has been destroyed to such extent that it is not generally re- 



