1900 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



813 



Sugar syrup when fed to bees he insisted was 

 sugar syrup still. R. L. Taylor, who took 

 the floor in opposition to the gentleman, sug- 

 gested that he was disagreeing with Mr. Cow- 

 an, whose paper had just been read, on the 

 chemical properties of honey. "Can't help 

 it," said Mr. Abbott. I finally explained that 

 I had been misunderstood, that syrup fed 

 half and half was not honey in the commer- 

 cial sense, and only indirectly in the chemical 

 sense. I agreed with the gentlemen, that per- 

 haps it was not wise to give the general public 

 the impression that sugar syrup could be fed 

 to bees and made into a kind of honey, be- 

 cause some bee-keepers might be encouraged 

 to put out sugar honey, and because such ad- 

 mission inight give the general newspaper the 

 foundation for another comb honey canard. 

 When the ' ' smoke of battle Jiad cleared away ' ' 

 it appeared the objectors would be perfectly 

 willing to accept the term " inverted," which 

 term as a compromise I agreed to adopt ; but 

 I still insisted that sugar syrup fed thin was 

 changed chemically — was inverted — in that 

 the cane sugar of commerce when fed to bees 

 was by them converted to grape sugar. It is 

 well known by chemists that the nectar of 

 flowers is chemically cane sugar ; that when 

 it has been gathered by the bees, and stored 

 in the combs, it has been changed to the grape 

 sugar of honey. 



This proposition should not be assailed by 

 bee-keepers ; for the truth can never hurt us. 

 Here is the point : Honey is the most easily 

 digested sweet in the world, because it can be 

 absorbed by us with little change. Cane su- 

 gar, which con.stitutes three-fourths of the 

 sweets of commerce, is poisonous to the blood, 

 according to Cheshire ; and before it can be 

 assimilated by us it has to be transformed by 

 digestion to grape sugar. According to Cook, 

 " If cane sugar is absorbed without change it 

 will be removed by the kidneys, and may re- 

 sult in their breakdown." 



Let it be distinctly understood that I am not 

 championing " sugar honey," for I have al- 

 ways opposed it ; but I do believe we ought to 

 preach the doctrine that honey is distinctly 

 different from any other sweet, that it is more 

 easily assimilated than any other. 



OUR 1200 RED CLOVER OUEEN AND HER 

 DAUGHTER. 



This queen is proving to be more of a prize 

 than we at first supposed. Besides the fact 

 that her bees are the most wonderful honey- 

 gatherers we ever had, storing honey right 

 along when other colonies have to be fed, 

 we find them exceptionally gentle. Twice I 

 have seen the hive opened in the morning 

 when the temperature was almost down to the 

 frost-point. The thin board cover wa-s remov- 

 ed with a snap both times, and yet those bees 

 took it without the least sign of resentment. 

 I have seen colonies before as gentle as this, 

 but they were practically good for nothing for 

 honey ; but here are bees that can hardly be 

 coaxed to sting, much less volunteer an at- 

 tack when handled as bees .should be. 



We have now learned the secret of their 



great honey-gathering qualities. It exists, as 

 1 supposed, in the great length of their 

 tongues. I measured them, and found the 

 length to be so much greater than any thing 

 el be I had previously placed on the scale that 

 I concluded I must have made a mistake. I 

 then asked one of our men, Mr. R. G. Calvert, 

 who has bt en measuring the tongues of bees 

 for me to a considerable extent ; and I was 

 both surprised and gratified when he said they 

 were the longest- tongued bees he ever measur- 

 ed — jVo — while the average is j^i'^f,. The near- 

 est approach we have had to this are some 

 bees Irom J. P. Moore. Their tongues showed 

 a measurement of /^^j. 



I think we may safely conclude that, when 

 there is any particular colony that will gather 

 more honey from red clover thr.m other colo- 

 nies, the bees of it have longer tongues. 



At first I thought there was no ver}- grtat 

 variation in tlie tongues of the averag< colo- 

 nies, but I find there is considerable. When 

 we find there ere differences all the wa} from 

 i\io up to f„V. then it is evident that, b} a lit- 

 tle careful selection, we shall be able to secure 

 a strain of exceptionally long-tongutd bets. 

 If our queen lives through the winter 1 shtill 

 be almost tempted to take her up to some is- 

 land so that her daughters can be bred to 

 drones from a queen or queens having equally 

 long tongues. The Moore queen, already re- 

 ferred to, would be a good one to take. One 

 colony should be devoted to the rearing of 

 drones, and the other to the rearing of queens. 

 By careful selection we might be able to find, 

 probably, a daughter of these queens, whose 

 bees would give the measurement of {\fi^. If 

 we have already got iVo ^s the length of the 

 tongues of the bees of a daughter* of our 

 breeder, then why can we not reach the ^^^q 

 mark ? I think we can. Then bee-keepers 

 will be able to roll in totis of honey where 

 710W they get only hundreds of pounds. 



Next summer I shall endeavor to make some 

 sort of arrangement so that we can have the 

 two queens put on an island. It will cost 

 something to rear queens of this kind and in 

 this way ; but there is not a breeder in the 

 land who would not be willing to pay $25.00 

 for a breeder whose bees could show up tongues 

 i^/o long — a plump quarter-inch. Such length, 

 I will venture to say, will reach into most of 

 the clover-heads. 



Later. — I have been measuring the corolla- 

 tubes of some stray red-clover heads. The 

 longest measure ^ of an inch in depth, the 

 shortest, yi inch, and the average somewhere 

 about %. inch or ^\fy^ inch deep. So then, if 

 we can get bees with tongues of this length, 

 we have come very near reaching our goal. 

 At this rate we will get there next summer. 



By the by, we shall not be able to fill any 

 more orders for red-clover queens this season. 

 We will try to take care of all orders thus far 

 booked ; but we can accept no more orders 

 for this season's delivery, as we have been, to 

 use a commercial phrase, " cleaned out." 



* We sold this queen as a tested clover. If we had 

 known the length of her bees' tongues we would not 

 have sold her. Now we want to get her back. But 

 who has got her? Our books don't tell. 



