1910 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



389 



special source of honey-dew, whether from 

 trees or aphicls; but the accumulated nectar 

 may force itself through the cuticle of the 

 leaf, thus producing honey-dew." 



One of the best authorities on the sources 

 of nectar is Professor ( iaston Bonnier. In 

 his "Les Nectares " he has described the 

 production of nectar without aphides. In- 

 deed, in many parts of Europe this honey- 

 dew is so plentiful that apiarists transport 

 their bees there. Here are Bonnier's con- 

 clusions: 



"The excreted liquid of aphides is not 

 equally sweet, and the bees harvest only 

 that which is very sweet. They generally 

 prefer the true honey-dew (miellee) which 

 exudes from the leaves. I have often seen 

 some trees, and even all the trees, covered 

 with an abundance of miellee falling in 

 small drops, although there was not a single 

 louse on the higher limbs." 



Now for some practical and scientific bee- 

 keepers. Professor Cook states that he saw 

 trees coated with drops of sweet liquid which 

 could be there only if given off by the leaves. 

 Mr. Loveday, a gardener bee-keeper, and a 

 very observant man, in Vol. 26, Britisli Bee 

 Journal, writes, "Honey-dew either forms 

 upon or exudes from the leaves of trees and 

 plants; and if the trees are examined, few of 

 them will be found infested with aphides." 



Our late editor, Mr. Broughton ("arr. writ- 

 ing in 1898, page oOl, says, "Honey-dew is 

 not the excreta or waste matter of the aphis, 

 or green fly, but, on the contrary, is a sac- 

 charine substance or sweet juice which ex- 

 udes, under certain atmospheric conditions, 

 from the surface of the leaves of trees. Con- 

 sequently there is no real analogy between 

 the two substances." 



Mr. Cowan, the editor of the British Bee 

 Journal, records his opinion as follows: 

 "We are perfectly aware that opinions are 

 divided as to the source of honey-dew; but 

 we agree with those who think it generally 

 is an exudation from the pores of leaves un- 

 der certain conditions of the atmosphere, al- 

 though it may sometimes be produced by 

 aphides. We have on several occasions ex- 

 amined trees producing honey-dew in abun- 

 dance that were free from aphides." 



One of your correspondents some time ago 

 described his sample of honey-dew as "de- 

 liciously fine." Was this "bug juice"? I 

 trow not. Professor Surface (with whom 

 I am supposed to differ) on page 623, 1909, 

 says, " I believe it is comparable to the pro- 

 duction of milk." Does not that imply that 

 it is a secretion? And, by the way, on the 

 same page the learned professor, speaking of 

 the cornicles, says, " It is not alivai/s secreted 

 by this means," implying that it may be 

 sometimes. Messrs. Kirby and Spence, fol- 

 lowed by many of our entomologists, distinct- 

 ly assert that clean limpid drops issue from 

 these two setiform tubes. One authority I 

 have consulted says, "They possess two horn- 

 like processes from which exude small drops 

 of a saccharine fluid called honey-dew, a fa- 

 vorite food of bees and ants." Dr. Hewitt 

 maintains I am entirely wrong as to the 



cornicles; but if so I am erring in good com- 

 pany. 



I can not do better than ask your readers 

 to study Mr. Cowan's able summing-up of 

 the discussion of the subject at the Conversa- 

 zione in issues of the British Bee Journal, 

 April 28 and May 5, and especially his con- 

 clusion that honey-dew is produced by exu- 

 dation of the leaves. 



Banff, Scotland. 



TWIN NUCLEI VS. SINGLE NUCLEI, 



The Advantage of Using Cells in Place of Virgins 

 in the Raising of Queens. 



BY M. T. PRITCHARD. 



[In order to understand fully the article which 

 follows, by Mr. Pritchard, the man who has charge 

 of our north yard, the reader will need to turn to 

 our editorial on page 33(5. Mr. Pritchard raises a 

 very nice grade of queens, and a large number as 

 well.— Ed.] 



Just now we are making up our nuclei for 

 our summer's work, and the same problem 

 confronts us that has for the last four or five 

 seasons, which is, scarcity of bees. We have 

 found that )4 lb. of bees is about the small- 

 est amount with which we can start a nu- 

 cleus and have it keep up its strength 

 throughout the season. We have also found 

 that, where this small colony is di\ ided by 

 a thin board partition, brood-rearing is not 

 interfered with, and it makes a home for 

 two queens as well as one; and since we aim 

 to have about 350 virgins in the mating- 

 boxes all the time (at the basswood apiary 

 alone) , the saving of 87 lbs. of bees is a strong 

 point in favor of the twin boxes. To look 

 at this number of queens every day is no 

 small job; and when we can, by going to and 

 opening one box, see two queens instead of 

 one we have saved half the travel and near- 

 ly half of the time required. 



Mr. Bain objects to the twin box on ac- 

 count of the difficulty of introducing virgins. 

 This I do not take into consideration, be- 

 cause I do not believe in introducing virgins, 

 for several reasons. First, the running-in 

 of virgins is a slow job, requiring three or 

 four times as much time as it would take to 

 introduce the same number of cells, and the 

 loss in introducing is much greater; and 

 while it is true that a cell can not locate it- 

 self in the warmest part of the box, it is al- 

 so true that queenless bees will always clus- 

 ter around a ripe queen-cell, no matter what 

 part of the box it is in, and a cell in a clus- 

 ter of bees, even though it is a small cluster, 

 will be better cared for, and will hatch soon- 

 er, than if it were caged in a strong colony, 



I find it just as easy to destroy a scrub 

 queen that hatches in a nucleus as though 

 she hatched in a cage, and the work of cag- 

 ing the cells is all saved. And while it re- 

 quires about 36 hours on an average for the 

 cells to hatch after being introduced to the 

 nucleus, yet I do not consider it a great loss 

 of time over the introducing of virgins, be- 

 cause, in order to run in a virgin, the nucle- 



