;640 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Oct. 15 



INTERIOR OF W. W. TURNER'S WORK-SHOP WHERE HE MAKES HIS HIVES AND FIXTURES. 



viz., the wild cherry and the cherry-laurel. 

 I have sent samples of the pollen of ttiese two 

 blossoms to Mr. Young, and he now has their 

 srrains on record in the Government labora- 

 tory and museum. He will be able another 

 time to identify them if he finds any in honeys 

 analyzed by him. But they are not the cause 

 of the darker hue in our orange honey, for 

 they both bloomed this year, as well as hereto- 

 fore, right in the opening of the orange bloom, 

 after bees began working in supers, and all 

 honey from them would have gone — must 

 have gone — right into the orange honey. If 

 it had been of any perceptible amount or 

 off color, the hue of the resulting honey 

 would have been dark as usual. As a matter 

 of fact, the bees do little working on any 

 thing else than orange when it once begins 

 in full blast. And still the honey this year 

 is very light. I am convinced we have found 

 the reason. Last fall, for the first time in 

 years, after a very rainy and damp summer 

 the bees had their hives full of brood in Oc- 

 tober, but were practically in a starving con- 

 dition. I had to feed many pounds of sugar 

 to keep them alive during the winter. Whei, 

 the orange honey began to come in, the hives 

 were almost destitute of honey or stores of 

 any kind. Had the orange held off a few 

 days longer I should have had to feed all my 

 colonies in the spring also. Heretofore, the 

 hives have been well filled in autumn with a 

 dark-red honey, from the palmetto berry (that 



is, the juice from the berry of the palmetto i, 

 and there has always been somewhat of it 

 left when the orange flow began, and supers 

 were put on. Our opening days of orange 

 flow are usually cool. The bees store all 

 honey at first close to the brood — that is, 

 right under the top-bars. As the season ad- 

 vances and the weather warms up, the brood- 

 nest is expanded, the queen is given room, 

 and the honey in those frames under the top- 

 bars is carried up into what is now the sur- 

 plus-chamber, the supers, and a dark color 

 given to the mixture ; that is, the honey would 

 be, in that case, in the main, orange with a 

 slight admixture of palmetto-berry honey but 

 enough to give it a darker shade. 

 I have tested this matter very carefully for 



TURNER'S HOME AND APIAKY, MADE POSSIBLE 

 BY IRRIGATING-DITCHES IN WYOMING. 



