466 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Oct. 



tho very bPSt. If as much as one-fourth of the hon- 

 ey coming in on any given day was basil it would, I 

 think, flavor all the surplus stored that day, owing 

 to the bees' habit of handing honey from one to the 

 other and mixing it up. My snow-white field clover 

 (if I should ever get it), flavored by one-fourth 

 sweet basil would be almost millennial honey, would 

 it not? Basil began to bloom this year about July 

 16th; and yesterday, Sept. 17th, I saw bees at work 

 on it. Some stalks, howevei, are now brown and 

 dead; and most of its bloom closed some time ago. 

 Basil is a light-green plant two feet high, more or 

 less, dividing into numerous branchlets toward the 

 top, and inclining to be level above. Each branch- 

 let ends withaliitle head, about the size of half a 

 hazel nut, from which the flowers spring. But few 

 flowers spring from the head at any one time, but, 

 eventually a good-sized head gives rise to as many 

 as forty. The flowers are small and short tubed. 

 Take an individual floweret of the catnip and cut it 

 shorter by one-half and you have something like the 

 basil floweret— white with a slight purplish tinge, 

 and little spots of darker hue. 



HELIANTHUS. 



"Who ran to catch me when I fell, 

 And kissed the place to make it well?" 



In short, what came gallantly to the front this bad 

 season, and gave me some surplus honey (more than 

 all other plants combined), when I feared that my 

 whole crop would not exceed a dozen sections? The 

 helianthus. The spring bloom came in a flood, and 

 went again like a game of bo-peep. White clover 

 gave the bees only a scanty living. Cornels were 

 wonderfully profuse of bloom, but not a bee could 

 be seen on them from first to last. Basswood came 

 two weeks ahead of time, before the bees had 

 swarmed. It came and went, and only here and 

 there a hive had just a few filled sections. Didn't 

 things look blue for a while? Couldn't look to buck- 

 wheat to help me out, as farmers have pretty much 

 left off sowing that in their zeal for wheat raising. 

 What was sown gave no surplus honey. Under 

 these circumstances it was a very pleasant surprise 

 to me to find how valuable a honey plant the helian- 

 thus is. I suppose it is more than usually abundant 

 in my locality, and that the well distributed rainfall 

 of this summer caused an unusual yield. This plant 

 is frequently called wild sunflower. It is tall enough 

 to pass for a sunflower, to be sure, but one seeing it 

 for the first time would hardly be reminded of the 

 stiff, stubbed, platter- flowered sunflower of the gar- 

 den. Its stem is slender and graceful, and its flow- 

 ers, which are numerous, are not very much larger 

 than an old-fashioned cent. It strikes me that the 

 botanical name, which happens to be a pronouncea- 

 ble one, is the better designation. I have great 

 faith in the bees themselves as good judges of hon- 

 ey. They wouldn't look at golden rod, which was 

 blooming in plenty, when helianthus was in its 

 prime, but began work at it when helianthus began 

 to fail. Hence I think the helianthus yields decid- 

 edly the purer flavored honey. We must not ex- 

 pect, however, that any plant in the great order of 

 composite will yield honey that is entirely free 

 from the chamomile flavor when the honey is new. 

 The color of helianthus honey is a glistening light 

 yellow which appears very well. 



Gleanings has made some inquiry about the red 

 bud, or Judas-tree. It grows here, four miles from 

 the Michigan line, and did well enough this year to 

 draw some b9es away from the ocean of apple bloom. 



Tho inference drawn in Sept. Gleanings, that 

 melilotus kills bees, ought to be supported by more 

 evidence before being generally accepted as a fact. 

 It is rather late to make such a discovery -a little 

 too much like finding out that oats poison horses. 

 The facts noted were suspicious ones indeed, but 

 next time put Ernest and that excellent microscope 

 at work upon the dead bees, and see if their bodies 

 are not full of the mycelium of a fungus. In regard 

 to bees, I only conjecture; but house flies in the fall 

 of the year are often so affected. They will die 

 standing on the window pane, and ihe fungus will 

 spread on the glass, forming a circular patch as big 

 as a nickel cent, and faintly visible to the naked eye. 

 Fungus spores may be caught while visiting some 

 plant (carried there by flies, perchance), and the 

 plant may be free at one time and infested at anoth- 

 er. I remember to have seen bees behave as you 

 describe; they were on some sunflowers that grew 

 near a barnyard. 



A mistake in the names of the melilots has stood 

 for some time in the price list, and might be correct- 

 ed when convenient. Melilotus Alba and Melilotus 

 Leucantha are the names for the same plant, as 

 given by different authors. Alba comes from the 

 Latin, and means simply white. Leucantha is a 

 Greek-f angled word meaning white fiowered. The 

 proper name of the yellow species is Melilotus Offi- 

 cinalis. E. E. Hasty. 



Richards, Lucas Co., O., Sept. 23, 1880. 



Many thanks, friend Hasty, for setting us 

 right on melilot. I am always glad to be 

 corrected, and I had several times wondered 

 what was the difference between melilotus 

 alba, and melilotus leucantha. I did not 

 know before that they were in the habit of 

 having two scientific names for the same 

 thing, in botany. 



Friend Jones has been here only four or five 

 hours, but has already got so well acquainted with 

 my sister, Mrs. Giay, that they two, together, have 

 luid n plan to get me to go to the National Conven- 

 tion, and succeeded so fully that I find myself put- 

 ting the last finishing touch on the editorials pre- 

 paratory to leaving. If God wants me at the con- 

 vention, that is just where I want to be. 



Our amber sugar-cane is all made into syrup, and 

 we have about 40 gallons, from the \'« acre. Now, 

 what we want for bee culture is a plant that will 

 furnish as much saccharine matter as the sugar-cane, 

 and furnish it, too, in a shape that will enable the 

 bees to take it right from ihe plant without any in- 

 tervention of sugar mills and labor of gathering, and 

 evap 'rating the juice. From my estimate of the 

 capabilities of the Spider Plant in the ABC, you 

 will see that it comes pretty near this desideratum, 

 and the product is incomparably nicer than any syr- 

 up can be. 



— h i m — — 



THE BLUE THISTLE NOT A THISTLE AT ALL. 



After considerable trouble, we have finally got a 

 plant of the so-called blue thistle, blooming in our 

 garden, and one of the girls declared it was not a 

 thistle, but Echium vulgare (blue weed). We sent it 

 to Prof. Beal, and he at once pronounced it the 

 same. It is very nearly allied to our common bor- 

 age, and I thought, when the blue flowers came out, 

 that it wns astonishingly familiar looking. I should 

 now call it, simply another variety of borage, and 

 nothing more. Borage grows easily, and comes up 

 very thickly self-sown; but I should never think of 

 calling it a bad weed, by any means. It simply 

 grows quickly on any ground not occupied with 

 something else. All the weeds that can get a chance 

 to grow on our honey farm are quite welcome. I 

 like to make their acquaintance with "Jack" and 

 the cultivator. 



