It grows and thrives well in Middle Geor- 

 gia, and I liave no doubt would do well in 

 any portion of the South. Last season the 

 writer sowed a plat of ground to buckwheat 

 in the middle of July, which made a fair 

 show, but had it been sown in August or 

 the first of September, it would have done 

 better. My bees luxuriated on it as long as 

 it blossomed. My experience is against the 

 opinion that has been advanced, that the 

 buckwheat is worthless in the South as 

 a houey plant. All honey-producing flow- 

 ers, in every country, are liable to vary in 

 the amount of their saccharine secretion 

 with the peculiarities of the season. Hence, 

 because a flower fails to yield its sweets 

 one season, is no reason why it may not 

 abundantly do so the next. Catnip (Nepeta 

 ■Cataria) is also rich in honey, and should 

 be planted in every nook and corner, in all 

 of the out of the way places. 



The writer would suggest to all bee- 

 keepers to take note of all plants that bees 

 frequent. Note the time of commencement 

 of bloom and the duration, also the approxi- 

 mate increase of honey stored during the 

 time such plants are visited by the bees.— 

 Observations of this kind, made as care- 

 fully as possible, would do much to advance 

 Jbee-culture in the South. 



J. P. H. Brown. 



For the American Bee Journal. 



Standard of Purity. 



The call for a standard of purity in the 

 Italian honey bee is a move in the right 

 direction, and should never be dropped 

 until the desired end is attained and the 

 rcsultpublished in the form of propositions, 

 by which dealers in Italian bees are to be 

 governed. We give the following : 



The queen's abdomen, a bright yellow 

 and tipped with black, with or without 

 black points on the back. In workers, the 

 first band next to the thorax very narrow ; 

 the second one broad, and separated from 

 the first by a very narsow black ring ; tlie 

 third and last, not so broad as the second, 

 but well defined ; the yellow free from 

 mottles, and the bees in the same colony 

 uniformily marked, though the shade of 

 color in different colonies may vary from a 

 pale, light yellow to a heavy leather color. 

 jDrones more abruptly marked than work- 

 ers ; the bands not so uniform, and inter- 

 sperced with black clouds with well defined 

 margins ; the under surface of the abdomen 

 yellow. 



The above is our standard of purity. — 

 Before leaving the subject, we wish to call 

 attention more closely to some peculiar 

 markings of workers and drones : The 

 exterior of the abdomen of each is com- 

 posed of segments. In the Italian worker, 

 the first ?} of these segments are a bright 

 yellow. The posterior margin of each is 

 marked by a black border, which separates 

 the yellow into 3 bands in the pure stock. — 

 The' remaining segments are black, the 

 middle of each is marked by a copious 

 growth of yellow or light colored hair or 

 down, and when the down is verj' ligiit on 

 the bees, some call them albinos. 



Diametrically opi)Osed to the above is the 

 markings of the drones. As with the work- 

 ers, the first three segments are principally 

 yellow, but contrary to them the black 

 border is on the anterior margin of these 

 segments. Want of prominence in the first 

 segment makes it hardly diseernable. In the 

 second segment the black anterior border 

 stands out boldly, while the remaining pai't 

 of the segment is yellow. In the third seg- 

 ment the black border is overlapped by the 

 yellow of the second and does not appear so 

 bold as the preceding, while the remainder 

 of the segment is intermingled with yellow 

 and black and at the same time overlaps the 

 next. These give to Italian drones that 

 peculiar marking which tends to excite ad- 

 miration. The remaining segments may 

 slightly share the yellow on their posterior 

 margins. S. D. McLean. 



Culleoka, Tenn., July 9, 1878. 



From the Home Journal. 



What is Honey-Dew ? 



Honey-dew is a substance— not an ele- 

 ment, but composed of elements. These 

 elements must be compounded somewhere. 

 The composition takes place in plants. — 

 Every plant is a laboratory within itself. — 

 All our sugars and sweets come from 

 plants, and are taken into the plants in an 

 elementary form through the leaves. 



Plants, like animals, are so organized as 

 to throw off by excretion excessive matter. 

 They sometimes imbibe too much of the one 

 element, or too little of the other, and for 

 want of proportion of the elements, assimi- 

 lation is retarded, and then the plant 

 relieves itself by excretion. An undue pro- 

 portion of the azotized and the unazotized 

 substances causes our large forests of oak, 

 hickory, and many other trees to excrete 

 that sweet, gummy substance, known as 

 honey-dew. It is this that causes the grass 

 of the broad Western prairies to become so 

 gummy as to adhere to the feathers of the 

 wild turkeys and other birds that wade 

 through it, till they cannot fiy. It is this 

 chemical derangement of plants that causes 

 honey-dew. 



Says Langlois : "I observed, during the 

 dry sunnner in 1843, that the leaves of the 

 linden tree became covered with a thick, 

 sweet liquid, in such quantity that for sev- 

 eral hours of the daj'^ it ran ofl: the leaves 

 like drops of rain. Many kilogrannnes 

 might have been collected from a moderate- 

 sized linden tree. 



In Grisen, Mr. Trapp possesses a clero- 

 deyidron frangrmis, ^rowinff in the house ; 

 it exudes on the surface of its leaves, in 

 September, large, colorless drops, which 

 form regular crystals of sugar candy upon 

 drying ; showing the change proportional 

 of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen as the 

 season changes and the organic activity of 

 the leaf changes. The proportion is not 

 assimilable nor nutritious to the plant ; the 

 plant organs in their functions excrete it. — 

 Thus we have honey-dew, a product of 

 plants by chemical derangement. 



Says Liebig : " In a hot sunnner, when 

 the deficiency of moisture prevents the 



