1889 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



881 



FiG.2. 



of the honey-dew on the chestnut, oak, and 

 hickory, it would seem to me that, in case of 

 the pear-trees, it must be of a different nature. 

 In the first-named case the leaves of the trees, 

 and sometimes the blades of grass and the 

 stones under them also, appear to be varnished 

 all over with the sticky substance ; in the 

 other case the honey-dew is found most plen- 

 tifully where the stems of the leaves join the 

 stock, as shown in my drawing, Fig. 1, and 

 indicated by the points of the arrows. 



After all, if this 

 kind of honey-dew 

 were an exudation 

 of the plant or 

 tree it would stand 

 out in regular 

 drops, convex at 

 the points of exu- 

 dation, as indicat- 

 ed in Fig. 2 a, but 

 in reality we find 

 it as in b. Single 

 drops, all flattened 

 out, of course, may 

 also be seen on the leaves here and there. 

 Aphides are absent — at least I did not discover 

 any while picking my Bartletts. However, 

 there are some other little insects present, yet 

 not in such countless numbers as we see the 

 plant-lice. They actually wallow in the sweet 

 fluid. Aphides never do this. I attempt to 

 give a picture 

 of two of the 

 insects as 

 found on a 

 leaf, consider- 

 ably magnified 

 in Fig. 3. The 

 dotted line 

 around one of 

 them indicates 

 the splash or 

 flattened drop 

 of honey on 

 the leaf. What 

 the little fel- 

 low, hardly a 

 sixteenth of an 

 inch long, is 

 doing, or what 

 he is there for, 

 I do not know. 

 I wish some 

 bug - professor 

 (I should say 

 entomologist ) 

 would enlight- 

 en me. 



Honey - dew 

 is rather unre- 

 liable winter 

 food for bees, 



to judge from experience. Colonies provision- 

 ed with such are not in good condition to be 

 taken into cellars, unless they are taken out 

 several times during the winter, and given 

 flights, and then the result might be question- 

 able. 



Should the winter turn out to be a mild one, 

 or should there be a number of warm days or 



Fig.3. 



spells at intervals of three or four weeks, 

 every thing will probably work well with out- 

 door-wintered stock, for I do believe that, 

 aside from the food question, our bees will be 

 in excellent condition. They will start into 

 winter with many young bees, breeding hav- 

 ing been kept up to a later date than usual. 



But we do not know, and have no means of 

 knowing, what the coming winter may have 

 in store for us; and to speculate on an uncom- 

 monly favorable time would be too hazardous, 

 to say the least. Of course, it will involve a 

 great deal of labor and expense to put our 

 bees on a safer basis for wintering ; but I be- 

 lieve it will be wise to make the effort. The 

 larger part of my bees will be "fixed up." 

 Fortunately a large share of my colonies are 

 each in two half-story brood-chambers, and 

 with them it will not be so difficult to improve 

 their condition. As soon as our honey- dew 

 flow ceases, and the largest part of the brood 

 has hatched from the combs, I contemplate 

 removing all the upper half-stories. They 

 contain most of the honey, the lower half- 

 stories almost none. That will give me a good 

 opportunity then to give my bees good whole- 

 some food in the shape of granulated-sugar 

 syrup, of which a sufficient quantity will be 

 fed at once. It may become necessary to 

 place an extra empty brood-chamber under 

 each hive to give enough room. A full colony 

 will winter on the eight half-story frames just 

 as well in the cellar as though they had more 

 comb surface to cluster on ; and the heavy 

 combs taken from them will keep better in 

 the honey-house than they would in the cellar. 

 When the colonies are returned to their sum- 

 mer stands in the spring, each may then 

 receive the same half-story full of honey that 

 was taken from them, and so the stored bug- 

 juice can be made to answer the most excel- 

 lent purpose of growing us the bees for the 

 white-honey harvest if it should come. 



How I shall treat the colonies that are on 

 full-sized frames I have not quite decided 

 upon, but I shall probably remove some of 

 the heaviest combs and feed syrup. I enter- 

 tain the hope that by feeding late, after the 

 brood has hatched, the bees will store the 

 syrup most convenient for them, and will also 

 consume it first. If they will do that, then 

 there will be a good reason to expect that they 

 will come out in spring all right. 



The winter following the honey-dew year 

 (it must be some seven or eight years ago) 

 was a very open one, giving our bees many 

 opportunities to fly. All our outdoor-wintered 

 colonies came through in the very best con- 

 dition. Those of the cellar-wintered, that 

 were set out in February, were all right; those 

 brought out later were proportionately worse 

 off, as the y had been k ept longer in the cellar. 



From these facts the reader can draw the 

 lesson, for I am sure the honey-dew of this 

 year is of the same character as that of the 

 other 3 7 ear spoken of, and will, no doubt, act 

 on the bees the same way. 



Naples, N. Y., Sept. 1. 



[I hope Prof. Cook, if he sees this, will tell 

 us about this new kind of honey-dew — the 



