THE AMERICAN BEE JOUENAL. 



47 



August to the 1st of September of that year; 

 and -wil] preface those observatious by presum- 

 ing that many persons have seen a plant com- 

 monly called dew plant, (in botanical works 

 called Deosmer*) that at mid-day, in the middle 

 ofaAvarm room will be covered with cool dew, 

 and bear in mind that on the Humboldt river 

 there is much alkali water, and bare alkaline 

 plains; that vapors from those plains may have 

 an influence on the higher stratas of the atmos- 

 phere, and produce chemical results that have 

 not heretofore been investigated by skilful 

 chemists. 



But let us have facts. 



The first honey dew that I saw on the Hum- 

 boldt was on a plant resembling the dew plant. I 

 stood on an alkali surface, with no other plant 

 touching it, and was loaded with pure honey, 

 with a pleasant flavor. 



I ate sparingly at first, and finding it good, I 

 hunted for other plants of that same kind, and 

 found them all loaded with honey, while there 

 was no higu of honey on the grease wood and 

 sage bushes, and but little on the willows. 



Within a few days, and farther down the Hum- 

 boldt river, the wnllow trees were loaded so heavi- 

 ly with honey that it bent them considerably; and 

 in going through, my clothing became so coited 

 with honey, that I took olf everything and 

 washed them out at the river, on different occa- 

 sions, after it had been my turn to get up the 

 oxen. 



Then again still further down and near the sink 

 or lakes formed by the Humboldt, there was 

 much coarse grass, almost like broom corn, the 

 blades of which were so loaded with honey that 

 the little Indians and squaws were stripping it 

 off with their fingers, putting it in to bowls, made 

 from tula or bulrushes, and boiling the honey 

 in copper kettles until it would grain slightly, 

 and then stowing it away in tula yessals, where 

 I ate a small amount. It tasted quite pleasant, 

 but I would not pretend to say that the squaws 

 looked neat that gathered it. 



I made some other observations, but it is only 

 honey that I am writing about just now. 



I have kept a large stuck of bees for thirty 

 years, and have noticed, although the weather 

 may be quite dry, if the nights are also uncom- 

 fortably warm, that bees gather but litte honey, 

 and the only reason that buckwheat is consider- 

 ed valuable as a honey plant, is because it blooms 

 generally in dry weather late in the fall, when the 

 difference in the temperature between two 

 o'clock in the day and two o'clock at night 

 is suflicient to favor the production of honey. 



Let me use one more illustration. Let any 

 person place his hands on the grass of a warm 

 evening, and he will find the dewy grass 

 much cooler than the surrounding atmosphere, 

 or even than the earth upon which it grows, 



That in the growth of vegetation there are min- 

 ute chemical changes effected that under favor- 

 able ciicumstances will produce in the bloom 

 honey, and that adverse circumstances would 

 produce but little if any honey. That under 

 certain conditions of the atmosphere, honey, or 

 as it is generally termed honey dew, is pro- 



•TWs l8 probably a misnomer. 



duced in vast quantities, and comes down direct 

 from above, covering the leaves with a thick 

 coat of pure honey, most abundant on all kinds 

 of leaves; and when it is rather light, it may be 

 seen only on the hickory and some few other 

 varieties of trees. 



Those extraordinary falls of honey dew are 

 frequent in the desert country east of the Sierra 

 Nevada Mountains, sometimes heaviest in one 

 locality, then in some other place. 



This phenomenon is probably produced by cold 

 currents of air passing over the Sierra Nevada 

 Mountains and coming in contact with the heat- 

 ed and partially stagnant atmosphere of the des- 

 ert country, impregnated with alkali, to the east 

 of those mountains. But in all cases within my 

 observations, particularly on the Humboldt,_the 

 weather has been dry, the atmosphere a little 

 smoky, the days warm, and the nights quite 

 cool indeed. Those signs are so invariably the 

 same that I have frequently predicted a honey 

 dew before seeing it. 



I am also aware that some persons contend 

 that honey dew is but simply the excrescence 

 of certain aphides; but a microscope will soon 

 explode that theory. 



All advance in ideas are only theories until 

 they become settled facts or exploded theories, 

 and the foregoing observatious have been pen- 

 ned with the expectation that they will be not 

 only criticised but ridiculed. 



But if our Government or the agricultural de- 

 partment thereof can be aroused sufficiently to 

 cause the necessary investigations to be made 

 I will endure the ridicule. 



Now that the Pacific Railroad is completed 

 it would be but a small matter for our Govern- 

 ment to send out some two or three able chem- 

 ists, with. the necessary apparatus for analyzing 

 and testing the condition of the atmosphere at 

 the time of those great falls of honey dew. 



A. W. Harlan. 



[For the American Bee Journal] 



Fertile Worker Bees ; or, Undeveloped 

 Females. 



Since writing my previous article on fertile 

 worker bees — see page 24, volume 5 — I have 

 had another very clear confirmation of that arti- 

 cle in my apiarv. In a stock of Ligurian bees 

 that lost its queen in April, 1809, I put in a 

 brood comb out of another stock, on which 

 they raised three royal cells, two of which I cut 

 out on the ninth day. I examined the comb 

 again on the seventeenth day, and found the 

 royal cell still sealed. On opening it, I found 

 the young queen dead in the cell, no queen in 

 the hive, and nearly all the brood hatched in 

 the comb I put in. 



On May 22, I again examined all the combs 

 and found no queen in the hive, but a number 

 of eggs laid in one comb. On carefully exam- 

 ining the worker bees on this comb, I saw one 

 going from cell to cell, putting its head in, the 

 same as a fertile queen does, to see that it is 

 cleaned out ready for an egg to be deposited in 

 it. At last she found one, and inserted her ab- 

 domen in the bottom of the cell, and laid an 



