GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



April 1. 



ey — just as when you press on honey with 

 your hand. ' The honey looks wet — is that 

 way when on the hive. It looks very badly, 

 and hurts the sale of it. Has this been writ- 

 ten about? G. F. Ayres. 

 Atherton, Ind., Jan. 23. 



[I do not know that hybrids are any more 

 inclined to make cappings of their honey 

 come in actual contact with the honey itself. 

 We have always supposed that black bees make 

 the whitest comb honey, for the reason that 

 the cappings do not touch the honey itself ; 

 that hybrids, from the fact that they were half- 

 bloods, were next best, and Italians third. 

 But usually there is very little difference in 

 the comb honey produced by any of the bees. 

 The season and its attendant condition has 

 more to do with it. When there is a moder- 

 ate flow, I have noticed that comb honey is 

 more apt to look water-soaked than when the 

 flow is rapid. During the last season there 

 was more so-called water- soaked honey on the 

 market than during any other year I have ever 

 known, and I attribute it to the fact that the 

 season was poor and backward, and that hon- 

 ey had to be necessarily left on the hive for a 

 considerable length of time. This water-soak- 

 ed appearance may be partly due to so-called 

 travel-stain; but more often because there are 

 no air-gaps between the cappings and the hon- 

 ey.— Ed.] 



LOGWOOD HONEY FROM THE ISLAND OF 

 JAMAICA. 



The honey-flow has staried, and is immense. 

 We are extracting rapidly, and the honey is of 

 the very highest grade — equal, we think, to 

 your basswood honey of which we see so much 

 mention made in Gleanings. The present 

 flow is from the logwood, and we intend to 

 send you three sections soon, as a sample, 

 which will, we think, satisfy you that West- 

 Indian honey is sometimes as good as the 

 Northern article. Hooper Bros. 



Kingston, Jamaica, Jan. 24. 



[The three sections mentioned above are at 

 hand. In looks it certainly would compare 

 favorably with any thing we can produce here 

 in Amern a. On breaking the comb we find 

 the honey very thick, of a beautiful crystalline 

 light amber ; and when one tastes it he utters 

 an exclamation of surprise and pleasure — at 

 least I did. The logwood honey is unlike any 

 thing else. Th^ flavor is peculiar, suggesting 

 something between violets and geraniums — at 

 least the honey seems to taste somewhat as 

 violets and geraniums smell ; and yet the dis- 

 tinctive flavor is not strong enough so one 

 would be likely to tire of it. My impression 

 is, that if this honey were on sale in some of 

 the cities, and if customers were allowed to 

 get a taste of it, it would all go off at fancy 

 prices. Not everybody may think as much of 

 it as I do ; but if all logwood honey is like the 

 sample sent us I predict it will rank side by 

 side with the choicest products of the world — 

 mountain sage, honey of Hymettus, or any of 

 the clovers. I hope the Hooper Bros, will 

 be able to ship us some extracted logwood 

 honey ; and if they can manage to make it 



come this long distance without being dam- 

 aged in transit we should like some of the 

 comb honey also. — A. I. R.] 



DO BEES LIVE AFTER STINGING ? 



In Stray Straws for Nov. 1, p. 790, there is a 

 note that the loss of the sting of a bee does 

 not necessarily prove fatal to it. I do not 

 wish to set myself up for authority on the sub- 

 ject, but I will relate a little experience I have 

 had in that line. 



Sept. 7 I had a horse stung so badly by bees 

 that it died. I was somewhat interested, and 

 watched to see what hive or hives the bees 

 came from ; but I could not see any dead bees 

 around any of the hives — that is to say, more 

 than usual. 



Wishing to experiment a little, and to find, 

 if possible, the cause of death of the horse, on 

 the 12th of vSeptember I procured an old horse 

 and a swarm of black bees in an old box hive, 

 and let the horse and the bees become well 

 acquainted with each other. In fact, I placed 

 the hive so that the horse tipped it over. I 

 let the bees sting him for about twenty min- 

 utes. I expected to find a large number of 

 dead bees, but I did not. I did not look to 

 see if the bees that were left had lost their 

 stings, but I was astonished not to find more 

 dead bees. 



The colon}' did so well that, in the last week 

 of September, I transferred them. When I 

 packed them for winter they were a fairly 

 strong colony, and I wondered what became 

 of the bees that stung the horse, for it did not 

 seem possible to me at the time that the} 7 could 

 have built up to the numbers they were after 

 the depletion there ought to have been if those 

 that stung the horse had died. 



George L. Vinal. 



Charlton City, Mass., Dec. 1. 



TRAVEL-STAINS. 



I do not wish to prolong this discussion, but 

 I should like to suggest some facts that seem 

 to conflict with Mr. Manum's position, or en- 

 tirely disprove the soundness of it. I presume 

 that every one who has placed an empty frame 

 between two frames of old dark-colored brood- 

 comb has seen quite dark-colored new comb 

 built in that frame. I have seen it, when first 

 started, nearly as dark as the old combs. I 

 have seen a whole frame filled with dark new 

 comb, differing in degrees of color. Can any 

 one deny that old wax was used in making 

 this comb? I will not affirm, as Mr. Manum 

 puts it, that the "bees made use of it for the 

 purpose of economy " (italics mine) ; but it is 

 certain that the bees used some kind of colored 

 foreign substance — it may be only old wax in 

 this case — and incorporated it in this new 

 comb. Why ihey did it I will not pretend to 

 say. Again, if the bees carry in so much col- 

 oring-matter on their feet and bodies as to 

 color the wax of the cappings, is it not reason- 

 able to suppose that some of this coloring- 

 matter would sometimes get mixed up with 

 the wax in the very new combs built for hon- 

 ey ? But we know that it does not. Bees be- 

 gin putting honey in this new comb some- 



