1879 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



431 



its load of honey sparkling in the rays of the 

 rising sun. The sight of a whole plant 

 bending beneath a sparkling load of nectar 

 like this is enough to set any bee keeper 

 crazy, let alone your enthusiastic old friend 

 Novice. Our plants are on ground made by 

 piling up the sods taken from where the 

 factory stands; this may. in part, account 

 for the great yield of honey. 



P. S. — "Lu" who has the care of the honey 

 plants, has been instructed to save every 

 particle of seed, and we can, at least, be able 

 to furnish you all a 5c, package. Perhaps our 

 friend Mollie has seed enough by this time. 



MORE ABOUT THAT WONDERFUL SPIDER 

 PL A XT. 



Oct. 14?//.— Yesterday morning, Mr. Gray 

 came down before sunrise, to verify my ob- 

 servation and see that there was no mistake 

 about that large drop of honey, the product 

 of a single night. There is no mistake. 

 Not only does a single floweret produce a 

 large drop, but some of them produce a 

 great many drops. Last evening, we made 

 observations by lamp light; and. before 

 nine o'clock, the globules of honey were of 

 the size of large shot. The crowning exper- 

 iment of all took place this morning. I was 

 up a little after 5 o'clock, and, with the aid 

 of a tea spoon, I dipped honey enough from 

 3 or 4 plants to fill a 2 dram vial, such as we 

 use in the queen cages, a little more than 

 half full. The honey in some of the flowerets 

 had collected in a quantity- so large that it 

 spilled out and actually streamed on the 

 ground. I have called this honey, but it is, 

 in reality, the raw nectar, such as is found 

 in clover and other flowers. The taste is a j 

 pure sweet, slightly dashed with a most beau- | 

 tiful, delicate flavor, resembling somewhat j 

 that of the best, new, maple molasses. The 

 honey will be as white as the whitest linden, I 

 so far as I can judge. With the aid of a 

 lamp, I evaporated the nectar down to thick 

 honey. You can see something of what the 

 bees have to do. when I tell you that I had 

 in bulk, only about 1-5 part as much, as when 

 I commenced. You see now, we have some 

 accurate figures with which to estimate the 

 amount of honey which may be obtained 

 from an acre of honey plants. 



HOW MUCH HONEY WTLL AN ACRE OF 

 PLANTS YIELD? 



I think I visited with my spoon, four plants. 

 Perhaps half of the nectar was wasted, either 

 by overflowing before I got there, or in my 

 attempts to spoon it out. This will give a 

 half dram of nectar to each plant, each morn- 

 ing. We shall set the plants 3 feet apart each 

 way. At this rate, we have nearly 5,000 

 plants to the acre, and they would yield every 

 morning, perhaps 5 gallons of nectar or one 

 gallon of ripe honey. The plant has been in 

 bloom in our garden, for the astonishing 

 length of time, of about 3 months; this would 

 give, counting out bad weather, perhaps. <io 

 gallons of honey, worth— say $60.00. I have 

 known a single colony of bees to gather a 

 gallon of raw honey in a day, from the clover, 

 but as the bees seldom work on the spider 

 plant after 9 or 10 o'clock in the morning, an 

 acre might require 5 or 10 colonies, to go all 

 over it every morning. How many acres of 



our best honey plants will be required, to keep 

 100 colonies out of mischief ? As the Simpson 

 honey plant yields honey all day long, the 

 two would go very well together ; and I am 

 inclined to think 5 acres of each {good soil, 

 well cultivated)would keep 100 colonies of 

 bees busy and out of mischief at least, dur- 

 ing the whole of the fall months when bees 

 have nothing to do. 



Bear in mind, my friends, that this plant 

 yields by far the largest amount of honey of 

 anything that we have ever come across," and 

 that its time of blossoming extends to an 

 unusual length. It may be also, that this a- 

 mount of nectar is only caused by the un- 

 usually fine, warm, October weather we are 

 now having. 



Our boys are, to-day, planting out 1,000 

 Simpson honey plant roots. I would advise 

 no one to undertake such experiments, un- 

 less they can stand a failure, if it should 

 prove such. 



DIFFERENCE IN COLONIES AS HONEY 

 GATHERERS. 



A few days ago, Will asked me to look at 

 a particular hive. Although it was a stock 

 containing few bees, every comb was filled 

 and bulged out with honey, and the cells 

 were in the process of being lengthened and 

 capped over, right in October. 



"Has not this colony been feds'" said I. 



"Not a drop." 



"Do you know where they are getting 

 this?" 



"I do not. I was as much surprised as 

 you are, when I saw it, as I was making 

 preparations to feed all of them for winter." 



I watched them for several days ; there 

 seemed to be little, if any, more activity 

 with this colony than with the rest, but 

 every bee that came in was heavily loaded. 

 Pretty soon, I saw that many of them, as 

 they came in, had small loads of dark green 

 pollen (as well as honey) like that from red 

 clover. Although I have not been able to 

 find the clover field, I have no doubt they 

 have found one, and it is from that they 

 have filled their hive. 



Why do they get honey so as to till their 

 hive, when others do not? Because the pro- 

 geny of this queen happen to be so much 

 more industrious. Among the hundreds of 

 hives around them, there are some others 

 that have partly filled up but none like this 

 one. I have noticed and mentioned similar 

 cases before, and I have every reason to be- 

 lieve that, so long as this queen lives, her 

 bees will always have stores when the gen- 

 eral run of bees have none. The queen is a 

 full blood Italian ; the one I have spoken of 

 in back volumes, whose bees always got 

 honey in the fall, was a hybrid. Think of it! 

 she has been worth a dollar in honey, if not 

 money, more than the average queens in my 

 apiary, in the last two months! 



Which is of most importance, my friends, 

 light colored, yellow bees, or hives full of 

 honey, during a dry September and October ? 

 I am very much inclined to raise queens 

 from this queen, next season. All you that 

 woidd prefer one of her daughters, next sea- 

 son, instead of a queen from an imported 



mother, please raise your right hand ! If 



you order, refer to this page. 



