Honey-dew is very abundant on many 

 plants, and is sought by the bees with 

 great eagerness. Honey-dew for the 

 most part furnishes rather an inferior 

 honey, being dark and in some instances 

 watery. There has been much cavil 

 for years in regard to the origin of 

 honey-dew. It has been known to 

 entomologists and botanists since the 

 time of Linnaeus, that the so-called 

 honey-dew was mostly the ejections 

 from the bodies of certain insects be- 

 longing to genus Aphis, to which plant- 

 lice belong. The word Aphis is from a 

 Greek word, which signifies to exhaust. 

 The principal characteristics which 

 distinguish these from other insects are 

 as follows : 



Their bodies are short, oval and soft, 

 and are furnished at the hinder ex- 

 tremity with two little tubes, or pores, 

 from which exude almost constantly 

 minute drops of a fluid as sweet as 

 honey ; their heads are small, their 

 beaks long and tubular, their eyes are 

 globular, but they have not eyelets, 

 their antennae are long and usually 

 taper toward the extremity, and their 

 legs are also long and very slender, and 

 there are only two joints in their feet. 

 Their upper are nearly twice as large as 

 their lower wings, and much longer 

 than the body — are gradually widened 

 toward the extremity, and nearly trian- 

 gular ; they are almost vertical when at 

 rest, and cover the body above like a 

 sharp-ridged roof. 



The winged plant-lice provide for a 

 succession of their race by stocking the 

 plants with eggs in the autumn. These 

 are hatched m due time in the spring, 

 and the young lice immediately begin 

 to pump sap from the tender leaves and 

 shoots, increase rapidly in size, and in 

 a short time come to maturity. In this 

 state, it is found that the brood without 

 a single exception consists wholly of 

 females which are wingless but are in a 

 •condition immediately to continue their 

 kind. Their young, however, are not 

 hatched from eggs, but are produced 

 alive, and each female may be the 

 mother of tifteen or twenty young lice 

 in the course of a single day. The 

 plant-lice of this second generation are 

 also wingless females, which grow up 

 and have their young in due time ; and 

 thus brood after brood is produced, 

 even to the seventh or more, without 

 the appearance or intervention through- 

 out the whole season of a single male. 

 This extraordinary kind of propagation 

 ends in the autumn with the birth of a 

 brood of males and females, which in 

 due time accquire wings and pair ; eggs 

 are then laid by these females, and 

 with the death of these winged indi- 



viduals, which soon follows, the race 

 becomes extinct for the season. 



Plant-lice seem to love society, and 

 often herd together in dense masses, 

 each one remaining fixed to the plant 

 by means of its long tubular beak ; and 

 they rarely change their places till they 

 have exhausted the part first attacked. 

 The attitudes and manners of these 

 little creatures as described by Harris, 

 whose words are used in the history and 

 parthenogenesis above, are exceedingly 

 amusing. ''When disturbed, like restive 

 horses, they begin to kick and sprawl in 

 the most ludicrous manner. They may 

 be seen at times, suspended by their 

 beaks alone, and throwing up their legs 

 as if in high frolic, but too much (Mi- 

 gaged in sucking to withdraw their 

 beaks. As they fake in great quanti- 

 ties of sap, they would soon become 

 engorged if they did not get rid of the 

 super-abundant fluid through the two 

 little tubes or pores at the extremities 

 of their bodies. When one of them 

 gets running-over full, it seems to com- 

 municate its uneasy sensations, by a 

 kind of animal magnetism to the whole 

 flock, upon which they all with one 

 accord, jerk upwards their bodies and 

 eject a shower of honeyed fluid." The 

 leaves and bark of plants much infested 

 by these insects are often completely 

 sprinkled over with drops of this sticky 

 fluid, which, on drying, become dark- 

 colored and greatly distigurin<, r tin 1 

 foliage. This appearance has been 

 denominated '• honey dew.*' but there 

 is another production observable on 

 plants after very dry weather, winch 

 has received the' same name, and con- 

 sists of extravasation or oozing of the 

 sap from the leaves. 



Horse-mint [monarda). This plant 

 furnishes an excellent quality of honey, 

 equal to white clover, finely flavored ; it 

 is the best honey-plant we have. It 

 grows on all our prairies, stands the 

 drought well, and comes in bloom just 

 when our bees are in their working 

 strength ; it blooms rather after the 

 middle of June, and gives a succession 

 of flowers for one and a half months, or 

 rather more than forty days. We all 

 rejoice when our bees are safely through 

 to the horse-mint. There are several 

 species of this plant here which furnish 

 more or less honey; the most valuable 

 are M. ciliata and .1/. punctata. The 

 first mentioned is nearly a month earlier 

 in flowering, though both are valuable 

 honey plants and deserve attention in 

 the way of cultivation. I believe some 

 of our apiarists are cultivating horse- 

 mint for its honey qualities. It yields 

 no pollen worth mentioning ; the anthers 

 project in a direct line with the upper 



