AMERICAN BEE JOURW 



4- 





EDITED AND PUBLISHED BY SAMUEL WAGNER, WASHINGTON^ J). 0. -.i / / 



AT TWO DOLLARS PER ANNUM, PAYABLE IN ADVANCE. 



Vol. VI. 



OCTOBEBt, IST'O. 



No. 4. 



[Translatfd for the American Bee Journal.] 



Origin of Honey Dew. 



In No. 11 of the Bienenzoitung for 1870, tlie 

 Baron of Berlepscli urges bee-keepers to make 

 diligent ol'servalions, to ascertain the origin of 

 honey (lew. I have for manj^ years given special 

 attention to the subject, as it is one of great in- 

 terest, not only to bee-keepers, l)ut also to po- 

 nidlngists. My observations fully corroborate 

 the remark of the Baron, that honey dew occurs, 

 in most cases, independently as a vegetable 

 excretion, and only occasionally as tlie product 

 of npiiides. On last Sunday, June IWtli, I had an 

 opi>ortunity to assure myself deti'-itely of the 

 correctness of this position. On that day, as 

 early as seven o'clock in the morning, I received 

 a visit from Mr. Heuser, of Westom, one of the 

 intelligent apiarians who compose the Ahrweiler 

 Association for Bee-culture. While we sat con- 

 versing about bees, a lad came to inform us that 

 he had, the evening before, seen a fine swarm 

 clustered cm a large pear tree. We nalurailj' 

 hastened to the spot, but found that the swarm 

 h:t i already decamped. A loud humming among 

 the branches, however, led us to suppose there 

 might be a hollow limb somewhere, into which 

 the bees had retreated, and friend Heuser was 

 induced to climb up in search of it. He found 

 none, but observed a multitude of bees busily en- 

 gaged licking up tlie hone}' dew with wiiich the 

 leaves of the tree were covered — being evidently 

 an exudation, for on the most careful examina- 

 tion we could not find a single aphis, though on 

 the morning of the next day thousands of aphides 

 were observable there. 



It remains for me to mention the state of the 

 weather at the time, for according to my obser- 

 vations this chiefly conditions the production of 

 honej'^ dew. On Saturday, June 18th, the weather 

 was oppressively hot. Towards evening the 

 wind began to blow from the northwest; and 

 the night was cool, though without dew on the 

 grass. This necessarily checked the circulation 

 of sap, which I regard as the primary cause of 

 honej' dew, for I may state explicitly that I 

 n; ver saw any, except when hot days were fol- 

 lowed by a sudden and great reduction of temper- 

 ature. The same observation was made, many 

 years ago, by an aged bee-keeper in Niederheck- 



enbach, who, whenever he notices in summer a 

 sudden change of weather, at night, from great 

 heat to cold, will rise at three or four o'clock in 

 the morning and close the entrances of his hives ; 

 as he is fiinily persuaded that the honey dew 

 certain to come, will be injurious to his bees. I 

 must confess that honey dew has not always 

 proved beneficial to our bees. In some cases 

 they seemed to be sickened by it, and to remain 

 so for nearly a week, as indicated b}' their ina- 

 bility to fly. This was more especially the case 

 at an apiarj' which I had in an oak forest, where 

 bark was largely stripped and dried for tanners' 

 use. I am unable to account for the occurrence, 

 and must leave chemists to determine whetlier 

 the consum[)tion of tannin had aught to do witli 

 it. Whenever honey dew occurs in my neigh- 

 borhood again I will strip leaves from various 

 trees affected In' it, and send them for examina- 

 tion to Dr. Kei.'rmrodt, of Bonn, the chemist of 

 the Agricultural Experimental Union of the 

 Rhine province. 



The views of Prof. Hallier, that the honey 

 dew produced by aphides is of great practical 

 account in bee-culture, I am not prepared to en- 

 dorse. During the summer of 1869 I was a 

 student in the Pomological Institute at Reut- 

 lingen, and very seldom saw a bee on any twig 

 covered with aphides, yet we were there sorely 

 auno3'ed by those parasites. Even now, I am 

 compelled to use soapsuds, &c., to rid my plants 

 of these unwelcome visitors, yet I have never 

 seen a bee among them. 



Your readers will probably be interested in 

 learning the views of two of the most eminent 

 pomologists, regarding the origin of honey dew. 



Court-gardener Jager, of Eisenach, writes as 

 follows to Regel's Garden-Flora: — "According 

 to my observations, honey dew is much more 

 frequently exuded from the leaves of plants than 

 produced by aphides. I regard honey dew, in 

 many cases, as a serjregation of the saccharine 

 portion of the juics of jilants, ichicli these are then 

 no longer able to excrete out of their organism by 

 means of the blossoms. I was led to adopt this 

 view bj' repeatedly observing that linden trees so 

 kept under bj' pruning that they never blossom, 

 excrete such a superabundance of honey dew 

 that such as is not gatliered by insects, drips 

 from the leaves to the ground, and is often col- 

 lected on boards and bottled. Linden trees 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1S70, by Samuel Wagner, in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at 



Washington. 



