1880 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



465 



syrup any way, much cheaper than we can 

 buy it, if we choose to take the trouble. Good 

 syrup, if I am correct, will always turn into 

 sugar by standing. The sugar, however, 

 holds the syrup in its crystals so tenaciously, 

 that it must be thrown out by a centrifugal 

 machine, something like our honey extract- 

 ors. Our extractors will probably answer 

 for doing it in a small way. I will try to 

 tell you about this next month. We had 

 nearly half an acre of the cane, but owing to 

 the dry weather, and rather poor ground, it 

 lias not made a large growth. We do not 

 know how much syrup we shall have. The 

 two pans are boiling now, just outside the 

 window where I am writing, and I tell you, 

 they work about as handsomely as any ma- 

 chine I ever before got up. As only a thin 

 sheet of tin intervenes between the syrup 

 and the steam, the pipes give out an im- 

 mense amount of heat. I should think the 

 expense of a pan, pipes and all, should not 

 exceed $3.00 or S4.CJ0. 



UiNBE(0(ifiI/KD HONEY PLANTS. 



fN the market, all white honey is clover and linn, 

 all dark is buckwheat, and all yellow is golden- 

 — ' rod. He must, however, be a dull boy in the 

 class who supposes thai all the surplus honey comes 

 from these four plants. There are several plants 

 little recognized that yield quite largely, besides a 

 multitude that help the bees along with their daily 

 supply of bread and cheese. Let us take a peep at a 

 few of them. • 



BLUE LUPINE. 



How we all rejoiced last spring in the splendid run 

 of honey from fruit bloom! But, alack-a-day ! the 

 unusual weather that produced it did also another 

 thing that wasn't so funny. Pretty much all the 

 early bloom in field and forest that should make the 

 spring melifluous for weeks, was crowded into the 

 same three or four days. This classmate's colonies 

 were very weak in flying bees just at lhat time. 

 The flood of honey went mainly to waste— and then 

 a dearth. The pert and cheery flower named above 

 came to the rescue with excellent effect. It com- 

 mences to bloom before the apple-trees do, and 

 holds on until long after white clover has begun. I 

 can not tell whether it ever furnishes a decided run 

 of surplus honey or not; but I found it this year an 

 excellent thing for bees to grub away at, week in, 

 week out, when little else could be had. The lupine 

 loves the sand "openings," and besides our corner of 

 Ohio, it has, I think, a wide range of territory in 

 Michigan and northern Indiana over which it be- 

 friends the beekeeper. Its pollen is bright orange 

 yellow. Lupines are much less abundant here now 

 than years ago. Our "openings," even in their wild 

 state, are plainly increasing in fertility, and other 

 plants are driving the lupines out a state of things 

 I look upon with some regret. To those who do not 

 know the flower I will try to describe it. The plant 

 is some 15 inches high, of which the spike of flowers 

 is more than one-half. An individual flower resem- 

 bles a small blue sweet pea, and the resemblance ex- 

 tends still farther to the pods and the peas. Many 

 of these flowers are arranged around a rather fleshy 

 stem forming a slender cone of bloom. The plant is 

 sometimes called the sun-dial on account of its cu- 

 rious leaves, which are round, and composed of 



many narrow leaflets radiating like the hour-marks 

 of a d;al, or the spokes of a wheel. 



CORNELS. 



When I was a boy, and lived in the heathenish 

 darkness of box-hive-ism, a new swarm of bees 

 would sometimes "light out" for the woods after 

 they had made a nice beginning at work in the hive. 

 Fine chance was this for honey-loving boy to fly up- 

 on the spoil. How pearly white was the abandoned 

 comb, and how beautifully clear the unsealed hon- 

 ey!— Bah! what kind of stuff is this? Sweet enough, 

 to be sure, and quite guiltless of any positively bad 

 flavor; but it tastes, for all Ihe world, like some 

 sort of molly-coddle fixed up for the baby, almost 

 uneatable even to the gastronomical small boy. 

 This, as nearly as I can get at it, was raw cornel 

 honey. Give it a little age and the "silliness" of 

 taste disappears, and it becomes indistinguishable 

 from the best clover honey. I think a considerable 

 percentage of the white clover honey of the market 

 is really from the white cornel, although, as the cor- 

 nels bloom in swarming time, most of the abundant 

 supply of honey is used up, and does not get into 

 the sections. The present year, the cornel bloom 

 totally failed to secrete honey, and the result was 

 that the bees quietly postponed swarming until 

 basswood bloomed, and then used up the basswood 

 honey in their swarming flurry. 



There are several species of cornel, but among 

 them the white cornel seems to be pre-eminent as a 

 bee plant. On rather poor upland it is about the 

 size and style of a hazel bush; on rich bottoms it is a 

 spreading shrub 15 feet high, and as thick as a man's 

 ankle. Take the tenth part of a bunch of elder 

 blossoms and you have a bunch of cornel blossoms. 

 The bloom gives place to a bunch of white berries 

 too bitter to be eaten. These waxy-looking white 

 berries are not very likely to be mistaken for any- 

 thing else. Sometimes, however, they seem not to 

 be in clusters; this is when there have been so many 

 bunches of bloom that the plant is able to mature 

 only one or two berries from each. The bark and 

 leaves have a whitish look, taking hues of brown 

 and red later in the season. The red cornel has red 

 shoots and bright blue berries. The early cornel, or 

 flowering boxwood, is the most conspicuous and 

 well known of the family, but I am not posted as to 

 its honey status, few of them growing near us. 



The best of all honey produced in this locality is 

 from the wild, sweet basil (Pycnanthcmum lanceola- 

 tum). If you can pronounce that smoothly, and 

 with a placid countenance, you may commence the 

 study of botany directly. While I deplore the disap- 

 pearance of the lupines I can rejoice in the assur- 

 ance that this very desirable honey plant is on the 

 increase. Could we get enough of it that bees might 

 work on it exclusively we might snap our fingers at 

 those California fellows with their white sage. Ba- 

 sil, like the sage, belongs to the great order of mints. 

 It is a neat, inoffensive plant ; its strong minty taste 

 defends it from being browsed by animals; it lives 

 in the ground for a series of years; and the flavor of 

 its honey is most delicious. If we are to have a hon- 

 ey plant cultivated for honey alone, I am not quite 

 sure but this is it. At any rate it seems to me that 

 I must find time somehow to post myself as to its 

 seed, its mode of propagation, its behavior under 

 cultivation, and so on. If we are to cultivate honey 

 we will hardly be satisfied with anything short of 



