July, 1910. 



American Hee Journal 



odor which I also recognized in the 

 honey, that put me right on the pro- 

 duction of this honey. This is one of 

 the principal blossoms, if not the only 

 one, which gives to the fall honey of 

 the Mississippi Valley that bright yel- 

 low tinge, and its combs and beeswax 

 also a deep yellow color wliich bleach- 

 ing does not remove. The late Mr. 

 Merkle. a wax-bleacher of St. Louis, 

 told me once that they disliked the 

 beeswax produced along the Mississippi, 

 owing to the impossibility of removing 

 this color when bleaching wax. 



I said that the honey which 1 had 

 been once told was from goldenrod 

 blossoms proved to be Spanish-needle 

 honey, and that we harvest no honey 

 from the former plant. I do not mean 

 to be understood as saying that there 

 is no goldenrod honey. After making 

 this discovery of the Spanish-needle, I 

 mentioned it at a local convention, and 

 I found that most other bee-keepers in 

 our Central States are of the same 

 opinion, but after we had decided with- 

 in our ranks that there was no such 

 thing as goldenrod honey, we met at 

 one of the national conventions hosts 

 of apiarists who were sure that their 

 crop in the fall was almost invariably 

 from this plant, and who had no Span- 

 ish-needle in their locality. This oc- 

 curred mainly in the East. 



The honey from Spanish-needle is of 

 such bright yellow color that a drop of 

 it on a sheet of white paper looks at a 

 distance like a drop of yellow beeswax. 

 Its quality is good. It is a little strong, 

 but not unpleasant, and it has the pecu- 

 liar flavor which many consumers as- 

 sociate with pure honey. In fact, when 

 you offer it for sale, no one will accuse 

 you of offering glucose or sugar under 

 the name of honey, and those of my 

 readers who have offered extracted 

 clover or alfalfa honey for sale know 

 how readily the uninformed consumer 

 will suspect these two grades of being 

 impure, owing to their smooth taste 

 and light color. Basswood honey is 

 also often suspected on account of its 

 whiteness, and I will never forget a 

 naive customer who accused me of 

 having put " some sort of lemonade " 

 in my basswood honey. He could see 

 no other cause for the basswood flavor. 

 Many people will work their imagina- 

 tion at long stretch to suspect the pro- 

 ducer of something dishonest. 



The Spanish-needles are a very good 

 evidence of the inability of bees to do 

 damage to blossoms by working upon 

 them. My readers have all heard the 

 usual complaint of uninformed and 

 prejudiced orchardists, that when the 

 bees work too much on fruit-blooms it 

 deprives the latter of the nectar which 

 would help them to form, and causes 

 the fruit to be small and knotty, sickly 

 and wormy! If such was the case 

 there would soon be degeneration in 

 the Spanish-needles and other wild 

 plants, for they bloom at a season when 

 the bees are upon them every day, and 

 gather their honey over and over. Yet 

 they produce seed in abundance, with 

 the healthiest kind of burrs. These 

 burrs are doubtless intended by nature 

 to help scatter the seed in all direc- 

 tions, for they fasten to the clothes of 

 men and to the hair of animals. The 

 burrs are almost as tenacious as those 



of the cockle-burrs, though less annoy- 

 ing. 



The French who came to Hancock 

 Co., 111., under the leadership of Cabet, 

 in good faith, to try the celebrated 

 Utopia of Communism, in 184P, settled 

 at Nauvoo, because this city offered to 

 them a number of empty houses, aban- 

 doned by the Mormons, who had been 

 driven away two years previously. 

 They probably found the former Mor- 

 mon homes more or less populated 

 with vermin, and as they also found the 

 abandoned corn-fields occupied with 

 cockle-burrs and Spanish-needles, and 

 knew nothing about these plants except 

 the annoyance which they caused, they 

 called them, in their picturesque lan- 

 guage, the former " poux de Mormons " 

 (Mormon lice), the latter " fourchettes 

 de Mormons (Mormon forks). The 

 Spanish-needle indeed resembles a 

 short fork. 



One more word about the coloring 

 matter contained in the pollen and in 

 the honey of the Spanish-needle, which 

 is so tenacious that bleachers have 

 been unable to get rid of it. I have 

 read lately somewhere in a bee-paper 

 that the beeswax produced by the bees 

 at this time is of yellow color when 

 first secreted by the bee. I believe 

 this to be an error. I have for years 

 watched the building of the bees dur- 

 ing the fall crop, as well as at other 

 times. I have been in the habit of rec- 

 ognizing fresh additions to the combs, 

 even in the height of the Spanish- 

 needle bloom, by the white color of the 

 latest built comb edges. The fresh 

 comb is almost pure white wherever I 

 have noticed it. But with such a gath- 

 ering of yellow honey and yellow pol- 

 len, especially owing to the latter, 

 which covers the bee's coat of hair 

 from head to foot, it is not astonishing 

 that the wax should gain this shade 

 within a very few hours after secretion, 

 since it is such a persistent stain. 



As I closed this letter I received an- 

 other enquiry, this time concerning 

 catnip. "Is it a good honey-plant." 



As reputations go, yes, catnip is a 

 good honey-plant, for bees work upon 

 it from morning till night during the 

 months of July and August, at a time 

 when, with us, there is nothing else in 

 the blooming line. But either because 

 catnip is not sufficiently numerous, or 

 because it is an indifferent honey- 

 yielder, there has never been any re- 

 sult. Perhaps it should be classed with 

 the honey-plants that constantly at- 

 tract bees without yielding enough 

 even for their own consumption. 

 " Langstroth Revised " mentions a plant 

 of this kind, Eryngium giganteum. 



Mr. Edouard Bertrand, who edited 

 the International Bee Journal at Geneva 

 for 20 years, having noticed the persis- 

 tence of the visits of the bees to this 

 plant, had the patience to make a test. 

 He marked some of the bees that 

 worked upon a bunch of this plant in 

 his park, on the shores of Lake Geneva. 

 He then had the perseverance to sit for 

 5 consecutive hours and watch the 

 same bees working upon the same 

 blossoms for this length of time with- 

 out apparent results. He nicknamed 

 this plant " the honey-bee's bar-room," 

 for, said he. "they keep sipping without 

 ever getting enough." The echinops, 

 so praised in America some 20 years 



ago, is of the same useless nature, and 

 I very much suspect the catnip of be- 

 longing to this deceiving class, in this 

 section at least. 

 Hamilton, 111. 



Forming Nuclei, Wax Color, 

 Etc. 



BY LOUI.S MACEY. 



If it is the intention to let the bees 

 rear their own queen (page 39.3, 11109), 

 why not take 2 or 3 frames of brood 

 and bees— say 3 frames of sealed brood 

 and 1 of honey, and llu- queeyi—^\\\. in 

 a new hive with 1 frame of foundation 

 and a division-board, and set on a new 

 location? It seems to me if this is 

 done just before swarming-time, the 

 queen with 2 frames of bees just ready 

 to vacate cells and go to work nurs- 

 ing ought to do fine, and the 6 or 7 

 frames left are in a much better condi- 

 tion to rear a queen than a weak nu- 

 cleus. I'm sure / don't want a 3-framer 

 to rear a queen any more. 



Color of "Virgin Wax (Page 394, 1909). 



Doesn't "locality," or the color of 

 the honey it is made from, decide this? 

 Our honey is water-white — from sweet 

 clover and alfalfa — and the freshly- 

 made comb is also quite white. I think 

 the yellowing with age is due not only 

 to the heat, but also to the bees crawl- 

 ing over it (probably rubbing on some 

 pollen or propolis), as I have observed 

 some little comb built outside a divis- 

 ion-board and left alone, remained 

 white longer than that built at the same 

 time in used frames. 



Bulk Honey (Page 402, 1909). 



I can sell it at the same price as sec- 

 tion honey, and lots more easily. It's 

 the " 16 ounces to the pound " that does 

 it. I sell it by the super or by the 

 frame ("deep shallow " frames), weigh 

 it all gross; customer cuts it out and 

 weighs back the empties ; customer sees 

 he gets 16 ounces-to-the-pound of all 

 "pure stuff," and I don't even get 

 sticky fingers, Mr. SchoU! But I 

 couldn't sell 10 tons. 



A lady told me she "bought a Mason 

 jar with 2 or 3 chunks of comb honey 

 swimming around in corn syrup!" 

 Now, we don't believe that was true; 

 but Missourians are not the only peo- 

 ple who have to be " shown " when it 

 comes to honey. 



Gray's Flour Introduction (Page 410, 

 1909). 



Ye who have trouble! Let's not be 

 forgetful hearers. I, for one, am going 

 to try it this season. 



Hive-Stand Discussion (Page 416, 1909) 



/ can't see that the ancient and hon- 

 orable " 4 bricks " can be improved on ; 

 but if one must use lumber — I bought 

 some hives last spring that had stands 

 with a maximum of utility and a mini- 

 mum of material ; they were a double 

 T in shape, and made of 1x6 stuff set 

 on edge and running crosswise under 

 the hive-bottom, just inside the end- 

 cleats, and nailed to a 1x4 or 2x4 that 

 run lengthwise under the middle of the 

 hive. Nails are cheaper than boring 

 holes, and there is a minimum of bear 



