THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



263 



Italian queen over the comb. He had Ital- 

 ianized lo colonies in one day. Care is re- 

 quired in reniovint^ the dead queen out of 

 tlie way as tlie bees niif:;iit cluster about the 

 body. In one ease the head and alulouien 

 of the iiueen were six feet apart when larjje 

 clusters settled on the disjointed remains. 

 They will cluster even about a lej; of de- 

 ceased royaltv, and the safety of the new 

 queen depends entirely upon the reuioval 

 of the old (lueen. Ills preference was for 

 hives 14}-2Xi» or 10 inches. He had found 

 his bees profitable. He had used the ex- 

 tractor, but he found a prejudice against 

 the use of honey prepared by the extracting 

 process. But when it is known that honey 

 in its purest form was obtained in this way 

 he thought it would be preferred. He could 

 see no obiection to candied honey. 



Mr. A. W. Windhorst, also of St. Charl(;s, 

 related his exi)erience. He had good suc- 

 cess with Italian bees. The honey last sea- 

 son, owing to the shortness of the sweet 

 clover crop, was fm-nished mostly by 

 Spanish needles and smartweed. 



The season was too wet for sweet clover. 



Mr. Thomas Parker, of St. Louis, gave 

 his experience at some length. 



Mr. W. G. Smith, also of St. Louis, said 

 he commenced keeping bees 15 years ago, 

 for profit and experiment; has had at differ- 

 ent times from 10 to 40 colonies. He found, 

 on the whole, that it was a very profitable 

 industry for Missouri. He thought more of 

 our people ought to go into the culture of 

 bees. An acre of ground it was estimated 

 would produce from 15 to 20 tbs. of honey. 

 He estimated that St. Louis was capable of 

 supporting 1,500 colonies where now there 

 were only from :500 to 400 colonies. There 

 was the blue grass, the forests and Shaw's 

 garden to draw the nectar from. He enter- 

 ed into a close estimate of the yield and the 

 profits, showing that bee-keeping would 

 pay from 25 to MO ]i('r cent, on the invest- 

 ment, but the bee cultivator nuist under- 

 stand it; he must have a taste, a love for it. 

 It is like other business. Nine-tenths of 

 those inexj)erienced in the business who go 

 into it fail. It re<iuires work, hard work, 

 and especially a practical knowledge of 

 wintering bees. 



Dr. Petzer said he commenced some 5 or (i 

 years ago with bee on the brain. He ex- 

 perienced considerable trouble in wintering 

 his bees. He had buried them in the 

 ground and in the cellar, but he found the 

 nearer he conformed to nature the better. 

 He described various hives used, and ( b- 

 jected to a cellar. 



Mr. Smith said he favored a dark cellar 

 well ventilated. 



Other gentlemen also gave their views. 



Mr. C. V. Riley then gave his views on 

 the question seiectetl for discussion at a 

 previous meeting— Do bees make or gather 

 honey? Mr. Kiley said he was fully con- 

 vinced that bees make honey. Honey as 

 we find it is a manufactured substance. We 

 find in the calyx of flowers nectar, not 

 honey. The bee laps up the nectar, it is 

 taken into the stomach, digested and regu- 

 lated in the ceil ot the comb. In this con- 

 nection the professor gave a scientific des- 

 cription, illustrated by a drawing of the 

 hymenoptera, to which the bee belongs. 



He« then took up the next question— 

 Whether bees injure fruit? — and said he 

 was satisfied from direct observation that 

 bees do injure fruit, and he thought that a 



man should not increase his stock of bees 

 at the expense of his neighbors' fruit. 



The secretary read an interesting essay 

 from the South," giving an analysis of honey 

 and nectar, and tending to prove the affir- 

 mative of tlie (luestion, that bees make in- 

 stead of merely gather honey. 



Other essays were nvul by the secretary, 

 and after some other l)usiness the meeting 

 adjourned. 



Do Bees Make or Gather Honey ? 



.\ PAl'EK JiEAU UEFOUE THE MISSOURI 

 VAI.I.EY ASSOCIATION. 



Oentlcmen:— At the organization of the 

 Missouri Valley Bee - Keepers' Associa- 

 tion, the secretary and treasurer of the asso- 

 ciation were instructed to solicit essays 

 upon practical subjects, to be read at the 

 next meeting which is to take place on the 

 4th of April, 187(). As I have been experi- 

 menting anil making researches on one of 

 the subjects I thought I would give you the 

 result. 



In taking up the subject, •' Do bees make 

 or gather honey?" I will not try to prove 

 that bees make honey, but that they gather 

 a sweet matter— nectar— from flowers and 

 that this matter is transformed into honey; 

 and my only aim in writing this will be to 

 try to raise a serious interest on this too 

 much neglected question. Though this 

 question may not be of interest to a majori- 

 ty of bee-keepers, it is nevertheless of great 

 utility in apiculture and might have in 

 practice very important consequences. 



Apiculturists and naturalists supposed, 

 and suppose yet, that honey has the same 

 composition as the nectar of the flowers; 

 and in many European bee - books it is 

 stated that the bees merely gather the 

 honey and deposit it. without alteration, in 

 the ceils where it only loses water. In 

 presence of the confusion and contradic- 

 tion existing at present on the matters 

 gathered and proiuiced by bees, it is neces- 

 sary in order to arrive at a decision, to make 

 a chemical and ])liysioIogical statement of 

 the production and coinpositioii of honey. In 

 nearly all the flowers in whicli fecundation 

 is accompanied by the intervention of in- 

 sects, there are organs, named by botanists 

 nectaries, secreting a sweet liquid matter, 

 which is generally known as nectar. It is 

 this nectar that the bees gather to produce 

 honey. Now we will see that nectar and 

 honey are two distinct things, and of a dif- 

 ferent composition, and that the bees cause 

 the nectar to undergo a chemical transfor- 

 mation to convert it into honey. 



^Ir. Bracoiinot has chemically analyzed 

 the nectar of over 'M species of plants of 25 

 different families, and lie has found them to 

 be of about a constant composition. He 

 says that the nectar is always identical 

 with itself. It is a colorless and limpid 

 liquid of a density little superior to that of 

 water. It does not contain, in general, 

 traces of acid, it is a neutral body, and blue 

 and red litmus paper is without action on 

 it. He represents the composition of nectar 

 as follows: cane sugar (or saccharose), I3- 

 nncrystalizable sugar, 10; water, 77 — total 

 100. 



He has found no trace of mannite nor glu- 

 cose. Now, it will be seen below, that 

 honey contains principally an excess of 



