1909 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



709 



THE ORANGE-TREE A PROFUSE YIELD- 

 ER OF NECTAR. 



orange honey should have a good demand. 

 The very name is enough to command a good 

 market. — Ed.] 



BY R. POWELL. 



The article by W. A. Pryal, page 236, April 

 15, on orange-trees and orange honey, inter- 

 ested me. Mr. Pryal gives a good many 

 facts, but he is not familiar with the orange 

 honey in Southern California. The trees 

 blossom freely for six weeks, beginning about 

 March 15, and continue through April. Dur- 

 ing that time of the year the weather is usu- 

 ally fine, with the exception of a few days 

 when there is some fog in the mornings. 

 There is no tree nor plant that yields honey 

 so freely and surely as the orange, basswood 

 not excepted. I kept bees in the basswood 

 belt of Wisconsin for twenty years, and I 

 have been here in this locality for fifteen 

 years. There is scarcely a day while the 

 trees are in bloom but that the branches can 

 be shaken so as to wet with nectar the ground 

 under the tree. The orange-pickers are al- 

 ways wet all day while they are at work; in 

 fact, teams that are cultivating have to be 

 washed after the day's work is done. 



I get a yield of from 60 to 120 pounds of 

 orange honey to the colony, spring count, 

 every year. The honey is fine, and is strict- 

 ly pure orange. It is the easiest honey to 

 get pure from one source of which I have 

 any knowledge. As is customary at this time 

 of the year, one can buy orange honey by 

 the carload. 



One objection to keeping bees in the 

 orange-belt is that the honey is very thin 

 when first gathered, and this makes the bees 

 swarm too much. The nectar comes so easi- 

 ly that the bees are not in shape to gather it 

 if they are kept on the California plan. 



HOW MICE SOMETIMES GET INTO EMPTY HON- 

 EY-CANS. 



Bee-keepers with out-apiaries in the West 

 often carry their supply of water in their 

 empty honey-cans; anci when all of the water 

 is used the screw caps are left off so that the 

 cans may dry out. Mice in quest of water 

 will some times jump into these cans for a 

 drink, and the next morning the bee-man 

 fills the can with honey without knowing 

 about the mouse. 



Riverside, Cal. 



[If nectar is secreted so profusely as to wet 

 down the orange-pickers and the horses that 

 cultivate under the trees, it would seem that 

 a sufficient number of colonies of bees should 

 be put in the locality to take care of this 

 sweetness that is going to waste. Why can't 

 that be done? and if it can be, why isn't it 

 done? 



The reports from Florida and other parts 

 of California have indicated that the orange 

 is a scant yielder of nectar. 



Friend PoweH's statementsare interesting; 

 and if orange-blossom nectar is secreted m 

 other localities as freely as this, we should 

 be glad to get reports of it. A strictly pure 



THE EVAPORATION OF WATER FROM 

 NECTAR. 



Some Interesting Observations. 



BY F. W. HALL. 



Many times I have noticed the jets of pure 

 water thrown off in some way by the bees 

 during a heavy honey-flow, as referred to 

 by Dr. Bruennich, page 397, July 1. I have 

 often tasted these drops, and never could de- 

 tect any sweet, so concluded that the bees 

 had some way of withdrawing this water 

 from the nectar other than by evaporating it 

 inside the hive. The article, therefore, by 

 Dr. Bruennich, is very interesting to me. 



I have kept a colony (about the average 

 of the yard) on the scales from May until Oc- 

 tober since the year 1898; and during the first 

 few years I weighed the colony three times 

 a day — early in the morning, at noon, and at 

 night. The table of these weights was given 

 in Gleanings, page 542, June 1, 1904. I no- 

 ticed at the time that the weights in the 

 morning were from ; s to Yz pound lighter 

 than the weight the evening before, when 

 the gain had been from six to ten pounds 

 the previous day. At this slow rate of evap- 

 oration it would take a long time to ripen 

 honey. When I shake the bees off the combs, 

 very little honey will be thrown out after 

 two days, even when a gain of ten pounds is 

 being made per day. Whenever I find that 

 the honey splashes out of the combs when I 

 shake the bees off, I wait a few days before 

 shaking off the rest of the bees. After two 

 days' time the honey will not splash out as 

 above stated. 



During the ten years that I have kept the 

 record of the weights I have found that there 

 are many periods of four or five days' dura- 

 tion, right in the midst of a good honey-flow, 

 when, on account of bad weather, the bees 

 are not able to gather honey. The decrease 

 in the weights in such periods is very slight 

 — proving, without a doubt, that no such 

 amount as four-fifths of the water had 

 been taken into the hive by the bees, although 

 the nectar had originally contained from 80 

 to to per cent of water. Either the nectar 

 contains much less water than is generally 

 supposed, or the bees have some way of get- 

 ting rid of most of it before they reach the 

 hives. 



On June 20 of this year the first gain was 

 made, and on July 3 it ended with a total in- 

 crease in weight of 40>i pounds. For nine 

 days after July 3 it rained so much that there 

 was practically nothing to do; and yet after 

 the nine days there was a loss of only 12 

 ounces. In spite of this, after the nine days 

 the honey was so thick that no amount of 

 shaking of the combs would cause it to splash 

 out of the cells. 



Storm Lake, Iowa. 



