cleft of the flower, dusting its pollen 

 grains over the body of the visiting bee. 

 Too much cannot be said for horse- 

 mint as a honey plant. 



Pig-weed (chenopodium album, Linn.). 

 This very common weed in fields and 

 gardens, blooms about the first of 

 August, and furnishes an excellent 

 quality of pollen ; unimportant as a 

 honey plant. 



Flax weed (bigelovia virgata, DC), 

 blooms about the first of August, but is 

 not visited by bees till late in the sea- 

 son when other and better flowers are 

 scarce ; it blossoms till frost ; the honey 

 is bitter and pungent. 



We have a plant of the genus solidago, 

 or a closely allied genus of the com- 

 posites, which I have not had time to 

 determine satisfactorily, which blooms 

 in August and furnishes an inexhaust- 

 ible quantity of honey until frost. 

 There are hundreds of acres of this 

 plant in this country, common in old 

 vacant fields, waste places, etc. With 

 a favorable fall, bees will get very rich 

 from it. The honey is so pungent and 

 firey that no one can eat it; even the 

 smallest portion of it will create a burn- 

 ing sensation in the mouth, throat and 

 stomach. I have seen persons who 

 had eaten not more than a few ounces, 

 and it caused such distress, that vomit- 

 ing, followed by violent purging, last- 

 ing several hours, was the sequel ; per- 

 sons who could eat pure honey with 

 impunity, and were very fond of it, too. 

 Such is the character of this honey that 

 most persons have supposed it to come 

 from pepper wood (^4. spinosa), the 

 taste of which is very much like that of 

 prickly ash {xanthoxylum). The honey 

 is of fine appearance, being transparent 

 as water, but of medium consistency. 

 Slow to granulate. It will remain 

 liquid six months, and I do not know 

 how much longer. I have never tried 

 boiling it to remove the pungency. I 

 contemplate making some experi- 

 ments the coming season on this honey. 

 Bees will winter on it if they have 

 plenty of it. My bees have had no 

 other honey, and have wintered in tine 

 condition. I would suggest that when 

 this harvest comes in, to extract all the 

 honey on hand, and let the bees have 

 the benefit of this honey for winter use, 

 as a safe plan. 



I shall make more extended observa- 

 tions on native honey plants in north- 

 ern Texas, the coming season, and hope, 

 also, to be able to write a paper on cul- 

 tivated honey plants as soon as I have 

 satisfied myself as to their value in this 

 climate. 



It will be remarked from the fore- 

 going incomplete descriptive list of 



honey plants, that our natural resources 

 for the production of honey, are equal 

 to any in the south or west. Our 

 climate is such that our bees winter 

 well on the summer stands, plenty of 

 stores to prevent starvation being 

 necessary only. Our country is subject 

 to severe droughts once in every three 

 or four years, which is very trying on 

 our apiarists, causing heavy losses on 

 account of starvation. 



There are other plants deserving at- 

 tention in a paper like this, but as I 

 have not had an opportunity to examine 

 them, and visit their localities and 

 ascertain their value, I will pass them 

 by. I have been more lengthy than I 

 intended, but I desired to offer a few 

 remarks on botany and entomology, to 

 explain certain extraordinary phenom- 

 ena in the production of honey. If 

 this shall be the means of rendering 

 information to those interested in the 

 subject, then its object shall be accom- 

 plished. 



White Kock, Tex., March 3, 1880. 



Translated for the American Bee Journal. 



Value of the Different Races of Bees. 



The following is the report of the 

 debate on this subject at the Austro- 

 German Congress, at Prague, last Sep- 

 tember, as reported in the Bienen-Zei- 

 tung: 



Dr. Pollmann remarked that the his- 

 tory of bee-keeping for the past 30 

 years, had demonstrated that in obtain- 

 ing the best races of bees we had to 

 contend with many difficulties. Dr. 

 Dzierzon, who introduced the Italian 

 bee into Germany, in 1853, described it 

 as " gentle, quiet and easy of manage- 

 ment." Baron Von Berlepsch said he 

 did not believe in the much-talked-of 

 virtues of the Italian bees ; he was 

 decidedly of the opposite opinion. In 

 1867, the Baron Von Kothschutz, Sen., 

 recommended the Krainer bee. In 

 1872, Count of Kolowrat, and Herr 

 Cori, introduced Cyprian bees ; and the 

 value of this race is now a much dis- 

 puted point. Some admire their beauty, 

 but others pronouce them as cross as 

 maddened beasts. The truth, evidently, 

 lies between the two extremes. All 

 races are good, if treated as near to 

 the requirements of their nature as 

 possible. 



Dr. Dzierzon said that both his ex- 

 perience and observation proved that 

 the Italian bees were gentle and not 

 fond of stinging. They are very coura- 

 gous in the defense of their stores, and 

 diligent in the gathering of honey. 



