MANUAL OF THE APIARY. 35 



economize by using fruit trees for this purpose, which, from their spreading 

 tops, answer very well. 



THE APIARY SUOULD BE IN MIDST OF 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 any- 

 thing 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 Leca- 

 nium. I have also seen them thick about three species of plant lice. One, the 

 Pemphigus imbricatar, 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, t 

 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 incon- 

 siderable stores during the terribly parched autumn of Chicago's great disaster. 

 Another species of Pemphigus gives rise to certain solitary plum-like galls, 

 which appear on the upper surface of the red elm. These galls are thin-skinned, 

 and within the hollows are the lice, and their abu.ndant sweet often attracts the 

 bees, as 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 unwholesome to the bees. Another, black aphis, works on the branches of 

 our willows, which they often entirely cover, and thus greatly damage another 

 tree valuable for both honey and pollen. "Were it not that they seldom are so 

 numerous two years in succession, they would certainly banish from among us 

 one of our most ornamental and valuable honey-producing trees. These are 

 fairly thronged in September and October by bees, wasps, ants, and various 

 two-winged flies, all eager to lap up the oozing sweets. This louse is doubtless 

 the Lachnus denMus, of Le Baron, and the Aphis salicti, of Harris. Bees also 

 get, in some regions, a sort of honey-dew, which enables them to add to their 

 stores with surprising rapidity. I remember one morning while riding on horse- 

 back along the Sacramento Eiver, in California, I broke oil a willow twig beside 

 the road, when, to my surprise, I found it was fairly decked with drops of honey. 

 Upon further examination I found the willow foliage was abundantly sprinkled 

 by these delicious drops. These shrubs were undisturbed by insects, nor were 

 they under trees. Here then was a real case of honey-dew, which must have 

 been distilled through the night by the leaves. I never saw any such phenome- 

 non in Michigan ; still honey-dew may be a product oven of our State. Has 

 anyone undoubted evidence on the subject? Bees also get some honey from 

 oozing sap, some of questionable repute from about cider mills, some from grapes 

 and other fruit which have been crushed, or eaten and torn by wasps and other 

 insects. Tliat bees ever tear the grapes is a question of which I have failed to 

 receive any personal proof, though for years I have been carefully seeking it. 

 I have lived among the vineyards. of California, and have often watched bees 

 about vines in Michigan, but never saw bees tear open the grapes. I have laid 

 crushed grapes in the apiary, when the bees were not gathering, and were raven- 

 ous for stores, which, when covered with sipping bees, were replaced with sound 



