BEE CULTURE. 283 



that tlieir proboscis is not of sufficient length to reach the honey 

 which is contained in it. Later in the season they resort to 

 fields of buckwheat. This furnishes honey in considerable 

 quantities, but it is inferior in quality and flavor to that which 

 is n-athcrcd from the white clover. It however answers well for 

 their winter stores. It helps many late swarms to survive the 

 winter. Buckwheat should always be sown in the vicinity where 

 bees are kept. The idea is extensively prevalent that bees have 

 the power in some way to manvfaclure honey. This is an error. 

 They have no laboratory for this purpose, and no peculiar pro- 

 cess by which the work is done. If it were so they would bring 

 all the materials which they employ to a given standard ; but 

 such is not the fact. Apple-tree blossom honey is one thing, 

 white clover honey is another, buckwheat honey is another, 

 southern or Cuba honey, which is gathered from the sugar 

 plantations, is quite another, and sugar sirup, which is some- 

 times fed to bees and is transferred by them, the liquid part of 

 which at length evaporates and leaves the sugar in a candied 

 Btate in the cell (thus spoiling the cells) is still another. Bees 

 are merely gatherers of honey, which various blossoms sponta- 

 neously produce. The honey is their food and they gather it. 

 They will transfer to their cells any kind of sweet which you 

 choose to give them, and large quantities of it, but no chemical 

 change takes place in the article while the bees have it in their 

 possession, or during the act of transportation. In one minute, 

 and frequently in less time than this, the material which is 

 gathered is deposited in the cell, and is substantially the same 

 thing after the transportation as before. But more of this in 

 another place. 



Bee-Bread or Pollen, — This is conveyed to the hive from 

 various flowers upon the thighs of the bees, and is often stored 

 up in considerable quantities beyond what is needful for present 

 use. There has been much diversity of opinion as to the par- 

 ticular use which is made of this article. It is at length settled 

 by satisfactory experiments, that the only use which is made of 

 it, is in feeding or rearing their young while in the larvje or 

 worm state ; that what is stored up is for use early in the 

 spring, when the hatching of the young commences, before 



