218 MANUAL OF THE APIARY. 



CHAPTER XVI. 



HONEY PLANTS. 



As bees do not make honey, but only gather it, and as 

 honey is mainly derived from certain flowers, it of course 

 follows that the apiarist's success will depend largely upon 

 the abundance of honey-secreting plants in the vicinity of his 

 apiary. True it is that certain bark and plant lice secrete a 

 kind of liquid sweet — honey of doubtful reputation — ^which, 

 in the dearth of anything better, the bees seem glad to 

 appropriate. I have thus seen the bees thick about a large 

 bark-louse which attacks the tulip tree, and thus often destroys 

 one of our best honey trees. This is an undescribed species 

 of the genus Lecanium. 1 have also seen them thick about 

 three species of plant lice. One, the Pemphigus imbrica- 

 tor, Fitch, works on the beech tree. Its abdomen is thickly 

 covered with long wool, and it makes a comical show as it 

 wags this up and down upon the least disturbance. The 

 leaves of trees attacked by this louse, as also those beneath 

 the trees, are fairly gummed with a sweetish substance. I 

 have found that the bees avoid this substance, except at 

 times of extreme drouth and long protracted absence of 

 honeyed bloom. It was the source of no inconsiderable stores 

 during the terribly parched autumn of Chicago's great 

 disaster. (See Appendix, page 286). 



Another species of Pemphigus gives rise to certain soli- 

 dary plum-like galls, which appear on the upper surface of the 

 red elm. These galls are hollow, with a thin skin, and within 

 the hollows are the lice, which secrete an abundant sweet 

 that often attracts the bees to a feast of fat things, as the gall 

 is torn apart, or cracks open, so that the sweet exudes. This 

 sweet is anything but disagreeable, and may not be unwhole- 

 some to the bees. 



Another aphis, of a black hue, works on the branches of our 



