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bought queeus from some of the best 

 breeders in America, and they all 

 turned out well. I can build up a 

 Carniolan colony larger, and keep it 

 so, better than I can an Italian colonj'. 

 As regards laying workers, I have not 

 been troubled with them, and I reared 

 in the neighborhood of 300 queens, 

 too, from this race. 



Below is an extract from a letter 

 written on April 15, that I received 

 from G. W. Cover, of Downieville, 

 Calif. — a man whose opinion in bee- 

 culture I value highly. He is situated 

 in a location where the snow some- 

 times falls to a great depth. The fol- 

 lowing is his letter : 



The snow here fell to a great depth, alto- 

 gether, I suppose about 60 feet; we meas- 

 ured until there was 56 feet, and then we 

 got tired and quit. "Well, the poor bees 

 were out in it all, as I winter mine on the 

 summer stands. We shoveled snow until 

 we had no place to throw it, and finally the 

 bees were covered over entirely, and we 

 never saw them again until the first of 

 March — without a flight-spell for 90 days. 

 When the snow began to settle, I went 

 around with a long pole, and poked it down, 

 and would strike a hive once in awhile, so 

 I got a little air to them until I could get 

 them out. 



On March 1, we resurrected them, and 

 found about two-thirds of them alive ; but 

 in such a damaged and wet condition that 

 they dwindled down to 12 colonies out of 

 54. I lost every Italian colony, while 

 every Carniolan colony came out bright 

 and strong, and are living and doing well 

 now. I think that the Carniolan is the bee 

 for the mountains. I want no more Italians. 



The country is still covered with snow, 

 and will not be gone for a month yet. The 

 bees are coming in with pollen from the 

 cedars, alders, willows, etc. 



G. W. Cover. 



The reader must not infer that there 

 was 60 feet of snow at one time — 60 

 feet for the winter, so far, and possibl}- 

 25 feet at one time. In these high 

 altitudes, the snow falls to a great 

 depth, and now that it is beginning to 

 melt, the creeks and rivers are over- 

 flowing with water. This has been 

 the hardest winter ever known in this 

 part of California. 



Bees are at present working on 

 California lilac, manzanita, alfilaree, 

 etc. We have had no swarms j'et. 

 The season is considerably later than 

 usual. 



Grizzly Flats, Calif., April 20, 1890. 



HONEY. 



Do Bees :flake Honey i — Fruit§ 

 in CaliTornia. 



Written tor the American Bee Journal 

 BY D. B. VnER. 



I have been ver}' much interested 

 in the discussion of this question from 

 time to time in the Bee Journal. The 

 majority of the bee men and women 

 hold that the 'bees do not make honey. 



that they simply gather the sweets 

 from flowers and other sources, where 

 it has been elaborated by the occult 

 hand of Nature ; but all seem to have 

 left out a good many interesting points 

 — more interesting, though, from a 

 scientific point of view than a practical 

 one. One that has a considerable 

 practical bearing is. How do bees re- 

 duce the surplusage of water in the 

 sweets that they gather ? The ma- 

 jority seems to think that bees cannot 

 do this. In this, I think, that they are 

 wrong. 



I have seen bees feeding in swarms 

 on the sugar-water as it run from 

 maple-trees. Would these persons 

 hold that the bees stored this diluted 

 sugar-water as they gathered it, in the 

 hive ? Though I do not see or under- 

 stand any way in which the bees 

 could reduce the proportion of water 

 to the sweet in a liquid, we should re- 

 member that there are many manipu- 

 lations and changes of form in matter 

 performed by the action of life, that 

 we can neither understand nov per- 

 form mechanically, or chemically. 



I think that the idea that the honej'- 

 sac of the bee is simply a sac merely 

 to carry with, having no functions 

 (like the basket one carries on his arm 

 to put the fruit in when he is gather- 

 ing apples), is all wrong. I believe it 

 has offices — functions — and one of 

 them is to reduce the amount of water 

 in nectar or other sweets which are 

 being gathered ; and while they are 

 carrying it to their home. 



As before stated in this bee-paper, I 

 am not an apiarist, but I consider my- 

 self an expert in finding bees in the 

 woods, and while engaged in this (to 

 me) most pleasant pastime and sport, 

 I have often noticed that when bees 

 are working on flowers with quite 

 water}' nectar (the compositcii late in 

 autumn), that so soon as they had 

 gathered their load, and after flying a 

 few feet, they evacuated a clear liquid, 

 invariably. This can be plainly seen 

 in the evening, by looking toward the 

 setting sun ; this liquid seemed to be 

 clear water, with no perceptible sweet 

 taste. 



Again, when baiting bees with clear 

 honey, they would fill themselves with 

 it, and fly directly away, without 

 evacuating ; but when using honey 

 diluted largely with water, or with 

 thin sugar-water, they would do it 

 every time. They would take up their 

 load in one-fourth to one-eighth of the 

 time, if the food was largely diluted, 

 that they would if it was thick honey. 

 They seemed to have to dilute heavy 

 honey, like a fly does sugar, before 

 thej' could swallow it. 



It is true that I have found very 

 diluted honey that had been stored 

 late in the autumn, but the evidence 



was in some cases good, that this was 

 gathered from scattered honey, and 

 from that alone. Here is the proof : 



I cut a large bee-tree with a great 

 amount of honey ; the tree in falling 

 was badly smashed, and a great 

 amount of honey wasted. I did not 

 kill the bee.s — they clustered, and went 

 to work. It was late in autumn — 

 flowers all goue ; they had two weeks 

 of fine warm weather in which to work, 

 and they gathered a few pounds of the 

 scattered honej', and stored it. I 

 robbed them, and found the honey 

 verj' thin. While they were working it 

 I watched them carefully, and sup- 

 posed I got a good " line " for another 

 tree, but when I traced it up, it was 

 simply a "line" to water. Here were 

 these bees "making honey" from 

 honey, and it was as thin as any gath- 

 ered at that season of the year from 

 flowers or "maple sap." I could give 

 other instances showing the same 

 facts. 



I think that "some of the boj-s" are 

 a little " off" on honey flowers. I had 

 fixed this point up in this way : 



Honey alwajs has two distinct 

 flavors — one given it by the scent 

 peculiar to the honey-bee's personality, 

 the same as beef tastes like the ox 

 smells, and mutton like the sheep 

 smells, etc. ; this odor seems to be a 

 combination of the scents from the 

 intestinal canal, the exuviai and exuda- 

 tions from the skin ; and, in the case of 

 the bee, while the bee has it in her 

 possession, she adds to it a minute 

 quantitj' of formic acid. 



The other flavor -is given to the 

 honey by the source of the nectar ; or, 

 in other words, if one fed bees on pure 

 sugar syrup, it would, so soon as 

 deposited, taste and smell like honey, 

 and its sweet would be changed from 

 cane-sugar to grape-sugar, no more to 

 to be changed back by any process 

 known to us, to crystallizable cane- 

 sugar again. Therefore, I maintain 

 with Prof. Cook, that bees both gather 

 and make honey.* 



CALIFORNIA FRUITS AND RAISINS. 



Here in California, since the long 

 dreary period of heavy i-ains closed, 

 bees have had a glorious time of it. 

 The whole face of the eountiy, valley, 

 hill and mountain is carpeted with 

 flowei's — such beautiful and fragrant 

 flowers. In Illinois, we had but about 

 a dozen wild flowei's that were first- 

 class for beauty, but here there are 

 hundreds. 



The season, though 10 to 15 daj-s 

 late, is well advanced. Strawberries 

 and cherries are freely in market ; 

 blackberries and raspberries are in 

 full bloom. 



The fruit crop promises to be large 

 and tine, of all fruits except apricots. 



