64 SUCCESSFUL BEE-KFEPING. 
and used chiefly to fill up the holes, and plaster the in- 
ner surfaces of the hive. 
Bee-bread, called also pollen and farina, consists of the 
fecundating dust of blossoms, and is also collected by the 
bees from the fine dust of flour—rye flour is best—and 
constitutes especially the food of their young. 
Honey is the great staple of the bee-hive. It varies in 
quality and value, according to the source from which it 
is obtained. The three principal honey harvests with us 
are, 1. From the blossoms of fruit trees in spring ; 2. 
and greatest of all, From white clover ; 3. Buckwheat. 
The honey locust, the basswood, the whitewood, oak, ma- 
ple, and other forest trees, and the flowers of a great va- 
riety of plants, also yield large quantities of honey. Our 
surplus honey should, if possible, be secured from the white 
clover, it being of the best quality. This is also the pe- 
riod of the most rapid comb building, empty hives being 
sometimes filled with comb in six days. Bees will often 
gather sufficient honey for their winter stores from buck- 
_ wheat alone, when it is near by, the season favorable, 
and they have plenty of empty comb in which to store it. 
Mr. Alvin Wilcox, of West Bloomfield, N. Y., is said to 
have had two swarms increase in weight twenty pounds 
from buckwheat in a single day. The field was within 
fifteen rods of the apiary. “The Baron of Berlepsch has 
had single colonies in his apiary which increased eleven 
pounds in weight in one day. Mr. Kader, of Mayence, 
had one which increased twenty-one pounds, and the Rev. 
Mr. Stein, of the same place, one which increased twenty- 
eight pounds, ina day.”—Bee Journal tor July, 1861, p 
i164.* 
*T have known a small second swarm, in the honey season, to store suffi- 
cient for winter in ten days, when empty combs were provided.--M. Quinby 
