178 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Mar. 1. 



tempt to answer it. He only shows how the 

 cappings of some comb honey becomes color- 

 ed and is erronously called travel-stained. If 

 I understand him he thinks that it is all caus- 

 ed by the incorporation of some foreign sub- 

 stance with the natural wax of the bees in the 

 cappings of the honey cells. It may be of 

 colored wax taken from old combs, colored 

 cappings from hatching brood-combs, propo- 

 lis, or other foreign substances. This he has 

 no doubt shown, sometimes, is the cause of 

 colored honey-combs. Mr. Crane's position 

 and arguments would lead us to the conclusion 

 that honey once capped over does not change 

 its color, or become travel-stained, by being 

 left on the hive. His main argument for this 

 conclusion is based upon the fact that he found 

 the cappings, taken from stained honey, to 

 show as much (or nearly as much) color on 

 the under side next to the honey as on the out- 

 side. He argues that this supposed-to-be out- 

 side coloring matter could not possibly pene- 

 trate through to the wax so as to show on the 

 inside; therefore it must have been incorporat- 

 ed with the wax when the cappings were put 

 on. 



This argument, or, rather, the superficial ob- 

 servations that led to it, are faulty. Wax in 

 thin layers is translucent. If colored on one 

 side the color will show through on the other 

 side. To verify this I had my eight-year-old 

 grand-daughter get out her paint-box and col- 

 or some cappings, on one side only, in various 

 shades, from light cream to brown, and even 

 blue. I placed the pieces on a sheet of paper 

 to dry, and when examined I found the color 

 to appear nearly as dark on the under side as 

 on top. I think that most bee-keepers will 

 not ba ready to agree that all the coloring-mat- 

 ter on honey is incorporated in the cappings. 



But my original intention was not to discuss 

 Mr. Crane's position. I had determined to call 

 attention to the coloring of combs before I 

 had seen his article. I want to get down to 

 the root of the matter: What causes the comb, 

 that is so beautifully white when first made, 

 to soon change its color to yellow, then brown, 

 and finally nearly black ? I may be answered, 

 flippantly, that it is because it is old — old 

 comb turns yellow. Because brood is raised 

 in it, raising young bees in it makes it dark; 

 they foul it, you know, and the shell of the 

 larva remains in the cell, and that colors the 

 comb. The combs are colored by the bee- 

 bread and the pollen and the propolis that the 

 order-loving insect has left scattered around 

 loosely. These substances are very highly 

 colored, don't you know ? Yes, they become 

 "travel-stained." The accumulation of dust 

 (from the flowers) and dirt upon their feet and 

 their bodies during their long hot journeys in 

 search of nectar is all brought home, and goes 

 to stain the combs. 



But these answers do not satisfy my inquiry. 

 A piece of virgin comb taken away from the 

 influence of the bees, and kept from dirt, will 

 never turn yellow by age. Combs that have 

 never been used for breeding, and that have 

 never contained pollen, when left in a hive 

 under the influence of a large colony do turn 

 yellow. The other answers need no comment. 



I have alluded to an article written by Mr. 

 D. L. Adair, on "The Economy of the Bee- 

 hive," published in the old American Bee 

 Journal, as heretofore noted, in which he says 

 something about the coloring of combs. Mr. 

 Adair was writing to sustain his theory that 

 bees could live without a continued supply of 

 fresh air, and only incidentally mentioned the 

 coloring of combs; but that mention brought 

 the inquiry to my mind. He spcke of the 

 compensating laws of nature in the animal 

 and vegetable kingdoms. The animals, in 

 breathing the air, throw off the carbonic acid, 

 which is taken up by the leaves of the plants, 

 and this restores the air to its original condi- 

 tion; so in a properly constructed aquarium, 

 furnished with water-plants, snails, etc., the 

 fish breathe the air and produce carbonic acid, 

 which the plants make use of and restore the 

 air. The snails eat the foul matter, and are 

 themselves eaten by the fish. This is a short 

 synopsis of a part of his argument. I want to 

 make a quotation. He says: "God did this, 

 not man. When he created the fishes he 

 made an aquarium for them. Was he less 

 mindful of the ' little busy bee ' when he gave 

 it a habitation in holes in trees, where, from 

 the very nature of things, they would be fre- 

 quently deprived of fresh air for months at a 



time? Experience says 



not. The bees produce, by breathing, carbon- 

 ic acid, which, if there were nothing to take 

 from it the carbon, would destroy them. 

 There are no plants to do it; but we find in 

 the hive several things that may answer the 

 purpose. The comb, it is well known, is at 

 first pure white, but first turns yellow and 

 then dark; and as it gets older it becomes per- 

 fectly black. Something must produce this 

 effect. May it not be this very carbon that it 

 absorbs that colors it ? It is further known 

 that, the older the comb, the heavier it gets. 

 This is not only true of the comb in the mid- 

 dle of the hive where the breeding is done, 

 but more so at the top where the honey is stor- 

 ed. It may be said that carbonic acid is heav- 

 ier than air, and therefore settles below. We 

 have shown that it first rises from being heat- 

 ed and thus rarefied." 



We may not all agree with Mr. Adair's theo- 

 ry of ventilation, nor with his suggestion that 

 combs are colored by the absorption of car- 

 bon; but we must admit that there is, in some 

 way, a close connection between the cluster- 

 ing, living, and breathing of the bees upon 

 the comb, and the coloring of the same. The 

 more densely the hive is populated, the sooner 

 the combs become yellow. If the colony is 

 so large that a part of the cluster extends up 

 into the super, and cling to the lower part of 

 the section honey, and are allowed to remain 

 there until cold weather drives them down, the 

 lower ends of those sections will be colored. 

 In weak colonies, and combs some distance 

 from the cluster, the process goes on more 

 slowly, if at all. The small colony doesn't 

 seem able to get up steam enough to carry on 

 the process of coloring, if I may be allowed 

 to use such an expression about a process I 

 know nothing about. Mr. Crane says, " I had 

 less travel-stain when my bees were allowed 



