Oct. 17, 1901. 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



661 



I Contributed Articles. 



Quantity of Nectar in Blossoms 

 by Bees. 



Water Used 



BV C. P. DADANT. 



DO all the blossoms yield nectar that are visited by the 

 bees for nectar? In other words, are the frequent 

 visits of bees to blossoms out of which they secure no 

 pollen an indisputable evidence that they are gathering- 

 nectar from these blossoms ? This is a proposition just 

 being debated between two progressive apiarists of France 

 — L'Abbe Multier. president of the Association of Bee-Cul- 

 ture of Haute Marne, and G. Collet, the editor of the 

 monthly " L'apiculture Pratique." 



L'Abbe Multier holds that in his section of country, 

 although the bees work faithfully upon the basswood 

 bloom, the}' never or almost never harvest any nectar from 

 this tree. He holds, that although the basswood blossoms 

 attract the bees, they go there and remain, in a sort of 

 drunken spree, for hours together, as the drunkard in a bar- 

 room, while the bees that go to other blooms go back and 

 forth, from the hive to the field, and vice versa, over and 

 over without stop. 



If the above-named gentleman had not in many 

 instances shown his observing mind, one might be tempted 

 to think that he misrepresented matters, but that is out of 

 the question. He is not the first who has noticed that the 

 bees may spend much time on blossoms without apparent 

 results, for Editor Bertrand, of the " Revue Internation- 

 ale," had, years ago, seen the bees eagerly at work upon 

 the blossoms of the Eryngium Giganteum, and had ascer- 

 tained that they secured nothing worth mentioning. He 

 had marked some of the workers while upon these blossoms 

 with a slight flour-dust, so as to be able to follow them in 

 their flight, and had actually seen the same bee on the same 

 bunch of biossoms, working faithfully and busily, for five 

 consecutive hours. It is very evident that the quantity of 

 n'ectar secured, though sufficient to keep up the life of the 

 bee, was so insignificant as to leave its honey-sac unfilled. 

 I mentioned this fact in my letters from Switzerland last 

 year, in the American Bee-Journal. 



When the Echinops Spherocephalus was accidently dis" 

 covered to be a valuable honey-plant (?), the gentleman who 

 made the discovery noticed the numerous visits to the plant 

 by the bees, and sat down to an experiment as did Mr. Ber- 

 trand, only, instead of marking a bee and watching it, he 

 marked a blossom and watched it. It appeared, if I remem- 

 ber rightly, that the same blossom was visited some 1600 

 times by bees during the same day. This experiment, 

 reported to the North American bee-keeper's congress, 

 brought the Echinops before the public in the United 

 States, and a general rush was made towards the produc- 

 tion of this plant. But it was since ascertained that not 

 only was this a noxious weed imported from France — a sort 

 of dwarf thistle — but it was also found, that, although the 

 bees were always upon it when in bloom, yet no apparent 

 results were secured. At least this is the final verdict, as 

 far as I have heard. Mr. Bertrand, through his experi- 

 ments in Switzerland, had already come to this conclusion, 

 and had discarded both the Echinops and the Eryngium as 

 not worthy of cultivation. 



In the case of the basswood, the accusation of useless- 

 ness is not to be considered, except in instances like the 

 one I have mentioned, where the trees are not numerous, 

 and the soil perhaps unfavorable. Many portions of 

 America are plentifully supplied with basswoods, and show 

 by their honey-crops that basswood honey is not a myth. 

 Numerous towns, cities and counties in the United States 

 are named after the basswood tree, and in many of these 

 the crop of basswood is almost as regular as the crop of 

 clover honey in others. And the odor of the basswood 

 honey, as well as its taste, can not be mistaken for any 

 other. It is stronger in flavor than the perfume of the 

 blossom whence it is produced, and its smell is no longer a 

 perfume, but a rank and almost disagreeable odor, which 

 has caused its being classed as secondary in quality. 



But the fact that the basswood bloom is evidently a 

 useful honey-producer does not, after all, destroy the evi- 

 dence, that in many cases the bees work upon blossoms 



which attract them by their pleasant smell and retain their 

 attention by probably supplying them with enough nectar 

 to please their palate, without giving them a sufliciently 

 remunerative quantity to make these blossoms desirable or 

 entitle them to a place among our domesticated plants. 



But plants and trees which furnish a supply of honey 

 in certain localities under certain conditions, prove useless 

 in other places, and it is for the apiarist to ascertain the 

 resources of his situation and act accordingly. 



DO BEES USE WATER TO COOL THE HIVE ? 



I see the above question put by J. A. Gerelds, page 566. 

 In this article Mr. (i. explains that he has lost a number of 

 colonies from the combs melting down, and that he was 

 told that the want of water by the bees was the cause of 

 this. Let me give him our experience on the subject. 



In 1878, if I remember rightly, we had established an 

 apiary of some SO hives of bees at the farm of an old 

 French gardener, about six miles from our home. The 

 hives were in the yard near the house, and only a few of 

 them sheltered from the rays of the sun by apple-trees. A 

 small number of the hives had roofs, the others (new hives) 

 were not sheltered in any way, for we had never before 

 experienced any loss from heat, and had no idea of the pos- 

 sibilities. 



• During that summer the crop was tremendous, and we 

 were distanced by the bees. We could not pat up our 

 honey-boxes fast enough to keep the bees with room, and 

 the combs were exceedingly heavy. I remember going to 

 that apiary at one time with six or eight extracting supers, 

 and being unable to give more than three or four empty 

 surplus combs to each filled hive, and these combs were all 

 filled at my next visit, a few days later. 



These bees needed no water supplied to them artifi- 

 cially. There was a large creek in close proximity, and they 

 have always gotten along finely at that place on their own 

 resources in that line. 



One day during the hot weather, I received word by a 

 messenger sent by my old friend, the gardener, that some- 

 thing was wrong in the apiary, as the bees were in an 

 uproar. 1 was unable to go there for two days, in spite of 

 his warning, and when I arrived on the third day I found 

 five hives entirely empty, and some 15 others with from 

 one to five combs broken down. The bees in the partly 

 damaged hives were already rebuilding combs over the 

 mass of piled-up broken combs, mixed brood, pollen and 

 honey. But the five hives that had broken down entirely 

 had nothing left but a pile of debris, dead bees and rotting 

 brood. Remember that all these hives had supers on, some 

 one, some two — supers of our large-size Ouinby, containing 

 when full some 60 or 65 pounds, and the body of the hives 

 probably contained as much. All this was gone, and very 

 certainly the most of it had run into the ground. 



It was at this time that we began using straw mats 

 over our hives, that is, over the oil-cloth, at the top of the 

 hive and under the cap, summer and winter, and it was on 

 the suggestion of our old friend, the gardener, who had 

 been used to straw mats all his life when gardening in 

 Paris. He knew how to make them, and made for us a 

 large lot; he said that in Europe they used them to keep 

 away the frost, to shelter their plants from the heat of the 

 noon sun, to cover their glass hot-beds on cold nights, and 

 for many other purposes connected with gardening. 



We have used these mats ever since. They not only 

 keep off the heat of the sun in summer, but they retain 

 the heat in the winter. They are good non-conducting 

 shelters, and absorb moisture. We make them of what is 

 known here as " slough-grass," " marsh-grass," the botani- 

 cal name of which I believe to be " Spartina," a tall, wiry 

 grass well known to any one who lives along the Mississ- 

 ippi. This material is stronger and tougher than straw, 

 and mats made of it would last for ever if we could only 

 bind them with indestructible twine. 



We had made also, some of these mats, of large size, 

 two feet high, by six or seven feet in length, and had used 

 them to wrap up our hives for winter. But they were so 

 cumbrous that we had to pile them up in a shed, and the 

 rats and mice destroyed the cord with which they were 

 made. I believe it would pay to keep such mats in a safe 

 place so as to use them for wintering. 



But the straw mat is not the only thing that we have 

 used to prevent a recurrence of the accident above men- 

 tioned. Whenever the hives suffer from the heat, we raise 

 them from the bottom-board so as to give plenty of venti- 

 lation. This we think is as necessary as the use of a shel- 

 ter from the sun. We also use roofs (portable roofs made 



