290 The Honey Bee. [July, 



of this tree in his locality ; not that he does not unite superior 

 skill, and long experience, to render his efforts the more eminently 

 successful, which is also the case. The great desideratum to bee- 

 keeping is bee pasture, ample and continued; give us this, and you 

 may have your Patent hives, and bee palaces. 



BEE FEEDING. 



"Will not bee feeding supply this defect ? We reply that so far 

 as making honey for the market is concerned, never. 



Honey is a vegetable secretion — and not a secretion of' the bee — 

 which appears generally abundant upon blooming flowers, and is gath- 

 ered by the bee through its proboscis, is swallowed, and on the re- 

 turn to the hive, is disgorged from the mouth into the cells. The 

 portion collected by each is of course small, and yet the amount 

 daily collected by a strong swarm in the midst of the working season 

 is surprising. In an hours time, it is estimated that three thousand 

 bees will go and return, in a swarm of eighteen thousand. And a 

 small swarm of six thousand bees, have been known to construct 

 four thousand cells in six days, and to fill many of them during the 

 same period. We have known three large pieces of comb consist- 

 ing of several thousand cells constructed during a single night, 

 after a new swarm has been hived, and the queen had in the mean- 

 time performed her work of depositing eggs in many of them. 



It is surprising what results they will accomplish in a brief space 

 when all the circumstances favor their operations. We once had 

 over one thousand pounds of honey stored by twenty eight young 

 swarms in a period of five weeks. This was no common season. — 

 Honey then being a vegetable product, and not a secretion of the 

 bee, its properties depend entirely on the nature of the plants from 

 which it is collected. One kind is of the finest flavor, delicious to 

 the taste, pure and transparent; another is entirely of a differ- 

 ent consistency, dark, greenish, tenacious or bitter ; and a third 

 has been known to produce deleterious effects, which were almost 

 fatal to human life ; and often even that which is apparently 

 wholesome to some, is injurious to others. Dioscoribes, Pliny, and 

 various ancient authors, speak of honey in the East being danger- 

 ous in certain years ; and Xenophon relates, that when the army 

 of ten thousand, approached Trebisond, the soldiers having partak- 

 en copiously of honey found in the neighborhood, were afl9:icted like 

 persons inebriated ; several of whom became furious, and seemed a^ 

 if in the agonies of death. Hence if man furnish the supply in 



