THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



483 



confide too much in theories, no matter 

 by whom sanctioned nor how long 

 venerated. 



Order a good queen-mother from a 

 reliable breeder, telling him whatyou 

 want and for what, and do not higgle 

 over the price. If lie is an honorable 

 man. you will not regret it. 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



Apiculture in Germany. — Mr. F. A. 



Hanneman, in the Bienenzeitung thus 

 contrasts bee culture in America and 

 Germany. 



Every man is a pupil in the school 

 of life. Science and his hard earned 

 experiences are his teachers. But it 

 sounds curious, to talk about a Ger- 

 man and American school in apicul- 

 ture — to mark sliarp lines, as Mr. 

 Dadant has done in an article pub- 

 lished in the liieneiizeilung. Has Mr. 

 Dadant forgotten that movable 

 frames, and comb foundation were 

 not iavented in America, but have 

 only been more successful tliere than 

 in Germany, and that the inventors 

 are Dr. Dzierzon, Baron Von Ber- 

 lepsch, and Mr. Mehring V He should 

 have said, Germany has the merit, 

 and America has the lu-olit. It is 

 entirely owing to the climate, tliat 

 Germany is not reaping the fruits of 

 her science. American bee-keepers 

 use frames longer than tliey are deep, 

 but we do not consider this an im- 

 provement, it is merely a system of 

 management peculiarly adapted to 

 that countrv and climate. 



Henlthfuluess of Honey. — An ex- 

 change remarks as follows : 



American people are lovers of sweet 

 and consume an average of 40 pounds 

 or more of sugar for every man, 

 woman and child of our population. 

 To meet this demand, millions of dol- 

 lars" worth of sugar are imported an- 

 nually, and millions of dollars' worth 

 of honey are allowed to go to waste 

 from want of bees to collect and put 

 in proper shape for the use of man. 

 It is not as generally known as it 

 should be that honey may be em- 

 ployed for sweetening purposes in- 

 stead of sugar, for most of the pur- 

 poses for which the latter is used. 

 But could we supply it to the extent 

 of diminishing our imports of sugar 

 to one-half their present proportions, 

 millions of dollars would be saved for 

 the purposes of business in our own 

 country. But far above all money 

 considerations would be the use of a 

 pure sweet upon the health of the peo- 

 ple instead of tlie vile compounds 

 now sold as sugars and syrups. Tlie 

 healthfulness of honey as food has 

 been admitted from the earliest 



writers down through the centuries to 

 tlie present time. Hence we have 

 nothing to fear from the free use of 

 honey, while recent developments 

 show we have mucii to fear as to 

 health in the use of adulterated sugars 

 and syrups. But the price of honey 

 in the past has had miicli to do in 

 keeping it from the tables of men of 

 limited means, who did not possess 

 the workers to collect and store it for 

 them. Honey is a vegetable produc- 

 tion, appearing in greater or less 

 quantities in every flower that nods to 

 tlie breeze or kisses tlie bright sun- 

 liglit in all this heaven-favored land 

 of ours. It is secreted in the flower 

 for the purpose of attracting insects, 

 thus securing the complete fertiliza- 

 tion of tlie female blossoms. Hence 

 it follows that all the honey we can 

 secure in the hour of its presence in 

 the nectaries of the flowers, is clear 

 gain from the domain of nature. 



Pollen and Dysentery. — Mr. A. 



Tettigrew in the London Horticultural 

 Journal, says : 



That adult bees live on honey and 

 do not eat pollen at all I steadfastly 

 believed for more than forty years. 

 Two or three years ago Mr.Baitt 

 stated in a private letter to me that a 

 highland lady fed her bees on barley 

 bannocks, that he had found the 

 husks of pollen grains in the excre- 

 ments of his bees, and that such ex- 

 crements changed their color if the 

 bees were fed on peameal. This 

 statement was quoted into the pages 

 of this Journal. This evidence ap- 

 peared satisfactory and conclusive, 

 and I said so at the time, though J 

 was convinced that bees can live and 

 be healthy for mouths on honey or 

 syrup alone — or, in otlier words, with- 

 out pollen or meal of any kind. Other 

 writers have said that pollen contains 

 the nitrogenous element necessary to 

 maintain the muscular strength of 

 bees. Much has been written and 

 spoken on this point without giving 

 facts to support it. Not so with Mr. 

 Eaitt, who gave substantial evidence 

 for his statements. Many hundred 

 colonies of bees have died of hunger 

 with plenty of pollen around them, 

 while they have been sitting on cells 

 of pollen : but whoever heard of bees 

 dying of hunger with honey beside 

 them ? 



Bee-Keeplngiii Egypt.— The Ameri- 

 can Cultivator remarks thus, on the 

 manner of keeping bees in Egypt : 



The Egyptians exhibit great skill 

 in their manner of cultivating the 

 bee. As the flowers and harvest are 

 much earlier in Upper Egypt than in 

 Lower, the inhabitants profit by the 

 circumstance in regard to their bees. 

 They collect the hives of different 

 villages on large barges, and every 

 proprietor attaches a particular mark 

 to his hives. When the boat is loaded 

 the conductors descend the river 

 slowly, stopping at all places where 

 they can liud pasturage for the bees. 

 After having thus spent thrpe months 

 on the Nile the hives are returned to 



the proprietors, and after deducting a 

 small sum due to the boatman for 

 having transported the hives from 

 one end of the river to the other, he 

 finds himself suddenly enriched with 

 a quantity of honey and wax, which is 

 immediately sent to market. This 

 species of industry procures for the 

 Egyptians an abundance of the pro- 

 duction of the bee, which they export 

 in considerable quantities to foreign 

 lands. In the counties of Yorkshire 

 and Lancashire, England, when the 

 moors are covered with a species of 

 heather called ling, and which blos- 

 soms in August, covering this barren 

 heath witli a beauty scarcely equaled 

 in any other country, distant bee- 

 keepers load their hives in wagons, 

 and having previously engaged quart- 

 ers for tlieiii with the farmers who 

 dwell on the confines of the moor, the 

 hives are conveyed to tlieir ranges, 

 where they remain a month or six 

 weeks. Comparatively empty hives 

 when carried away are brought back 

 full of honey, and many weak colonies 

 are thus enabled to winter over with- 

 out loss, while the best ones have 

 large quantities of honey and wax re- 

 moved from them, the product of 

 about two mouths in the year. The 

 hum of the busy bees and the bloom- 

 ing of ling enliven a scene which, 

 during the" other ten months of the 

 year appears but a dreary waste, at 

 best but a pasture for the black faced 

 heath sheep, or a breeding place for 

 grouse, hares and foxes, and hunting 

 ground for England's aristocracy. Of 

 late years many of these moors have 

 been enclosed, the lands cultivated, 

 and are producing an abundance of 

 potatoes, oats, barley and grass. 



The Labor a Bee Performs.— The 



following combinations of figures, 

 from the Michigan Farmer , will give a 

 faint idea of the ceaseless, patient and 

 rapid work performed by the honey 

 bees during the few short weeks when 

 everything is favorable for a good 

 honey harvest. Is it a matter of 

 wonder, that the days of the worker 

 are " dwindled to the shortest span ?" 



It is estimated that 12-5 clover blos- 

 soms contain one gramme of sugar. 

 xVs each blossom consists of fiO calyces, 

 at least 12.5,000 by 60, or 7..500.000 caly- 

 ces must be rifled to afford a kilo- 

 gramme of sugar, and as honey con- 

 tains 75 per cent, of sugar, it requires 

 .5,600,000 calyces of clover to yield a 

 kilogramme of the former; hence, we 

 may imagine the countless number of 

 flowers tliat bees must visit to be able 

 to stock their hives with honey. 



Attractive Packages. — An exchange 

 indorses our advice regarding neat- 

 ness in preparing honey for market as 

 follows : 



In marketing honey, this point 

 should never be forgotten — that a good 

 article in an attractive shape will al- 

 ways command the liighest price, tlie 

 best reputation and a steady demand. 



