16 
B^E-CULTURE. 
keep them in a'good humor. Bees are much less inclined 
te sting while they are collecting honey than at other times. 
A bee hat of wire-cloth or bobinet is a good protection for 
the face and neck ; and gum elastic gloves will protect the 
hands. Drawing the boots over the pants protects the 
ancles and legs. 
I have little faith in the remedies for bee stings, yet the 
popular ones are numberless. I presume ammonia, or harts- 
horn, or_soda are among the best. 
HONEY IS NOT MADE BY BEES 
Bees do not make honey — they only collect it. Their 
honeysack is not a chemical laboratory for inanufactuiing 
sweets. If bees arc fed on Cuba honey it will be found but 
slightly altered in the combs. If you feed dissolved sugar, 
dissolved sugar will be found in the cells. If bees collect 
honey from dogwood or tobacco bloom, we get an unpleasant 
or bitter honey. Buckwheat yields a dark-colored honey. 
White clover yields a beautiful, transparent honey, which 
when first gathered, is almost as limpid as water. It is left 
uncapped until the water evaporates, and then sealed air- 
tight, — thus preventing souring and candying. 
Bees do not collect honey from filthy slops as many sup- 
pose. They frequent such places post in the spring of the 
year for water, when they need it for their young. Their 
instincts lead them to obtain their drink from ooze or moist 
earth, instead of streams or bodies of water, whereby in their 
excessive eagerness they would be drowned. 
Bees lick or suck their honey from the flowers, with their 
probosces, until their honey sack, which is in their abdomen, 
is filled. They then disgorge this into a cell and return 
for another load. 
When honey is scarce in the vicinity of the apiary and 
abundant elsewhere, they sometimes fly three or four miles 
in search of it, yet they collect larger quantities if it can 
be found within a half a mile. Perhaps four-fifths of the 
honey collected is from white clover, and most of this is col- 
lected in four or five weeks, about the swarming time. The 
presence of abundance of flowers is. no sure evidence that 
honey is being collected. As soon as honey -gathering begins 
to diminish, after swarming, much more surplus need not be 
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