SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR. 
in 
worked on beautifully, but a sudden change to severe 
eold taking place, in consequence they could not leave 
their htves to procure nourishment, and I lost both. 
Now the idea that the sole dependence of the honey bee 
is upon the honey dew, is pretty enough as a poetical 
thought and may be true as far as the bird of paridise is 
concerned; but lam sure will not stand the touchstone 
of reason when you come to apply it the bee. That bees 
do gather from the honey dew has never been denied, but 
that they resort to this for their entire supply I do deny, 
and 1 will add, that the man who can establish the re- 
verse will immortalise his name. 
Tn regard to the point that bees visit flowers for the 
only purposes cited by the old hunter, the Dr. can again 
satisfy himself, in a very short time, that bis old friend is 
in error. If he will take his stand at a peach tree, or any 
shrub producing flowers that bees approve, there he will 
see some of the bees leaving the tree laden with their 
cargo of pollen, carefully packed in the cavities of their 
thighs, while others, dilligent workers, too, will leave 
with nothing visible. The question, then, is, what have 
these last carried home? If not pollen, the conclusion is 
irresistable that it was honey, the identical substance that 
humming birds, butterflies, and a thousand other insects 
gather from flowers; for, I presume, it will not be con- 
tended that they are gathering material for bee bread and 
honey-comb. Again, if the Dr. will confine a swarm of 
bees in a room, and supply them with syrup, made of 
sugar, they will thrive— -another fact going to prove that 
honey dew is not the only substance that bees can live 
on. I have frequently saved my bees, when the winter 
has been very severe, by feeding them on this syrup. I 
might call the Dr’s, attention to the swarms of bees found 
about the sugar hogsheads, soda fountains, confectiona- 
ries, &c , in our cities, and ask him to account for their 
presence. Would he answer, in the language of the old 
hunter, that they were collecting materials for forming 
honey-comb I The Dr. must know that bees gather 
nothing but pollen and honey, the first is always placed 
in the cavities of the legs, and never taken in the stom- 
ach ; it is the food of the larvae, and does not enter into 
the composition of wax. Pure wax is always white, 
whereas pollen is of different colors. If the Dr. desires to 
gee wax in its purity, let him examine a piece of comb 
just formed. When honey-comb is immersed in boiling 
water, to extract the wax, it is the pollen that imparts to 
it a yellow hue, but I repeat again, that bees do not use 
it in comb building. For full information on this and all 
kindred topics, I would refer him to Miner’s work on 
the honey bee. 
To make the question more interesting I propose to 
add a little more on the question of honey dew. 
What is honey dew I I presume the Dr. is aware that 
there exists a great diversity among naturalists on this 
question. Dr. Good describes it as “ peculiar haze or 
mist loaded with a poisonous miasm, that stimulates the 
hop to the morbid secretion of a saccharine and viscid 
juice” — Linneus ascribes the honey dew on the hop leaves 
to the catapiller of the ghost moth, {Hepinlus humuli) 
attacking the roots — Dr. Withering was of the same 
opinion. Mr. John Murray ascribes it to an electric 
change in the air — last Summer,” he says, “ we inves- 
tigated the phenomenon with great care : the weather 
had been parched and sultry for some weeks pre- 
vious, and the honey dew prevailed to such an extent, 
that the leaves of the currant, raspberry, &c., in the gar- 
dens literally distilled from their lips a clear limpid 
honey dew, excreted from the plant.” Mr. Ducarne, a for- 
eign naturalist, thus speaks ; ‘'You know what honey is, 
which the bees cffllect with so much ardor from flowers, 
but you do not, perhaps, know that there are two kinds; 
one, which is real honey, being a juice of the earth. 
which proceeding from the plants by transpiration, col- 
lects at the bottom of the calyx of the flowers, and thickene 
afterwards; it is, in other words, a digested and refined 
sap in the tubes of plants — the other, which is called the 
honey dew, is an effect of air, or a species of gluey deWj 
which falls earlier or later, but in general a little before 
and during the dog days.” “ 1 have long adhered to the 
opinion,” says Mr. Knight, that the honey dew deposited 
on the leaves of the trees, was only an exudation, &e.” 
Miner, than whom a better aparian never lived, says: 
“ It is my opinion that no honey dew ever existed that 
was not an exudation from the leaves of the tree.” I 
coincide in opinion with the last mentioned author; and 
if Dr. Baker had allowed his skepticism to have abided 
with him a little longer, he might have satisfied himself 
there, on the ground, that if his old friend, the hunter, 
was not laboring under delusion, he could, at least, have 
found good reasons to suspect it. The Dr. had been in- 
formed by the old hunter, that honey dew felt from the 
clouds.^' If the Dr. had examined the surrounding trees, 
the rocks and leaves on the earth, he would have seen nc 
honey dew, a conclusive evidence that it did not fall, for 
if it had, its appearance would have been general. But 
the Dr. says : “ The same evening we returned to his 
house, and at day light the next morning we went int© 
the yard, and the smooth-leaved black gums presented 
the same, appearance as did the hickories in the woods 
on the previous morning.” I would inform the Dr. that 
honey dew invariably makes its appearance on trees of 
the smooth leaf kind ; but whether it does or not, he may 
rest assured that bees will not refuse to use it let them 
find it where they will; therefore the old hunter gave incor- 
rect information when he states that they will not gather 
from any other than smooth leaves. 
I will call the Dr.’s attention to one important fact, and 
then leave the matter with him, and it is this : that honey 
gathered in regions where the white clover abounds is 
very different from that collected in the neighborhood of 
the buckwheat, the first being much whiter and of a 
purer quality than the last. We are also informed “ that 
the Sicilian honey seems to be particularly high flavored, 
and, in some parts of the Island, even to surpass that of 
the Minorca, which, no doubt, is owing to the quality of 
aromatic plants with which that country is overspread.” 
All this must be either true or false, and that it is true 
the Dr. can be easily convinced if he desire; and then it 
will devolve upon him to prove that honey dew is not 
identical in all latitudes, failing to do which he must ac- 
knowledge that bees do gather honey from flowers. 
On the second branch of the subject, viz : the qualities 
of honey, I shall have but little to say; while I regret 
that I cannot concur with Dr. Baker in his theory of the 
sources of honey, I cannot withhold the expression of 
the pride I feel in having the aid of one so intelligent as 
he in combatting the absurd notion that honey possesses 
poisonous properties. I am not one to make up an opin- 
ion upon, an “ it is said'^ argument— I must have reason- 
ing, facts, indubitable facts, before I can yield acqui- 
escence, believing that “ it is better when we are ignorant 
to say so, rather than to retard the progress of inquiry 
by inventing baseless hypotheses that explain nothing.” 
I have said that I do not believe honey to be ever poison- 
ous, because I have, and can find no proof that it is so; I 
have said that even admitting the nectar of some flowers 
to be poisonous, it does not follow that honey may be so, 
because the bee has too much sagacity to gather it. In this 
opinion I am sustained by Dr. Darwin, who says “ that 
bees are well aware of the sorts of honey that would in- 
jure themselves and will not therefore touch it,” though 
my friend. Dr. Campbell says, “the instinct of the bee 
may, in most insta'^ces, preserve him and his race from 
the toxic effects of the deleterious properties of flowers- 
