164 MONEY IN BEES IN AUSTRALASIA 



sometimes bring home a sweet material that is certainly 

 not gathered from blossoms. It is variously known as 

 honey-dew, aphide-honey, etc. Some of this sweet 

 substance is very pleasant to taste, and is also light in 

 colour, but the bulk of it is dark and very rank, quite 

 unfit for winter stores. It has been referred to as "extra 

 floral" nectar, but this is distinctly wrong and mis- 

 leading. It is purely a secretion from certain plant lice. 

 The aphides puncture the leaves and suck the saccharine 

 juice from the plant; the secretion (not excretion) drops 

 over the leaves and sometimes covers the ground under 

 the trees. The aphides have two tubes near the terminal 

 rings of the body, and it is through these that the 

 secretion is expelled. (Ants follow the aphides to suck 

 up the sweet substance as soon as it appears from the 

 tubes, so the aphides have been termed the ants' 

 "cows.") 



The author once stood under an "Apple box" tree 

 and witnessed the honey-dew falling like rain; it set into 

 a white sweet substance like manna. This is not un- 

 common in Australasian forests, but the manna is not 

 identical with that of the British Pharmacopoeia. The 

 manna there prescribed is that gathered from the Ash 

 {Fraxinus ornus). Baron von Mueller named the 

 "Manna gum" as probably the sole Eucalypt producing 

 melitose manna, but this is now hardly correct. Manna 

 has been gathered from various Eucalypts, viz. : — 

 "Peppermint" {E. amygdalina) "Eed gum" {E. 

 rostrata), "White Iron Bark" {E. leucoxylon), and 

 South Australian "White gum" [E. paniculata), from 

 punctures supposed to be made by certain coccids. 



Some of the garden Balsams secrete nectar at the 

 base of the leaves to deceive unwelcome insect visitors 

 (ants) that would rifle the nectaries of the flowers 

 without effecting fertilisation. Ants also sip nectar from 

 the base of the stipules of Vetch leaves. This is truly 

 "extra floral nectar" as is also that of the Balsams. With 

 certain Willows approach to the flowers (by ants) is 

 debarred by wax-covered slopes as slippery as wet glass. 



