1846. THE CULTIVATOR. 369 
BEES—COMPOSITION OP HONEY. 
Fences have become as diversified and various as 
they are necessary and useful: the address of the late 
N. Biddle, Esq., of Philadelphia, to the contrary not- 
withstanding 1 . He pronounced them absolute nuisances, 
and an annual tax upon the farmers of Pennsylvania of 
$10,000,000, and recommends the European system, dis¬ 
pensing- entirely with fences, using landmarks, shep¬ 
herds, and dogs, in lieu of them. 
The common worm fence, with stake and rider, is in 
almost general use in the interior of this state. This 
fence is made eight rails to a pannel, the worm four 
feet wide, stakes set out two feet at the corners; one 
foot more may be added which cannot be plowed, mak¬ 
ing ten feet of land in all, occupied by the fence. Such 
a fence, on a farm of 100 acres, divided into fields of 
ten acres each, with a Jane through the centre, will 
occupy about six acres of land. Capt. Hall, the Eng¬ 
lish tourist, described our worm fences as zig-zag, and 
the most unsightly and disgraceful looking things he 
ever saw. The scarcity of rail timber, however, will 
make this kind of fence give way to something more 
neat and economical. 
Locust posts and five chestnut rails constitute one of 
our best fences. Since iron has depreciated, some of 
our enterprising furnace proprietors have cast a neat 
article, with five holes, designed for posts, which pro¬ 
mises fair to take with our farmers. Posts made from 
white oak, or chestnut wood, lacking in durability, are 
troublesome and expensive. The farmers of Salem 
county, New-Jersey, are now partial to a kind of worm 
fence, without stakes and riders; they insert an iron 
rod three-eighths of an inch thick, through the corners; 
the rod is turned at the bottom, and bent over the top 
rail so tight as to make the fence withstand a tempest. 
In this fence, there is perhaps more economy than any 
other now m use; it occupies about half the ground 
taken up by a stake and rider fence. Five to six rails 
are sufficient for a pannel, making a handsome fence, 
resembling a wave, at a distance. I put up some my¬ 
self for a trial; I am much pleased with it. Using 
good chestnut rails, set on flat stones for corners, renders 
such a fence almost indestructible. 
W. Penn Kinzer. 
Springlawn Farm, Pegua, Lancaster Co-, Pa. 
WEANING- FOALS. 
Mr. Tucker —About three weeks since, I took from 
a couple of mares their foals, and put the latter into a 
meadow to wean. In order to keep them quiet, I put 
in with them a young mare, with whom they and their 
mothers had constantly run. In a few days it was dis¬ 
covered that one of the foals was in the habit of suck¬ 
ing this mare, and on examination I found that on one 
side there was something of a swelling or bag, and 
there was a milky substance contained on this side. 
One of the foals, also, was evidently receiving an in¬ 
jury. The mare was then removed; but I found the 
swelling still increasing along the belly towards the 
fore legs; the legs also began to swell, and even the 
hind legs swelled to such a degree that she could not 
trot, and it appeared to require an effort to move the 
left hind one, that being much more swollen than the 
others. 
Some rowels were put in the belly, but still the 
swelling continued to spread at the rate of about half 
an inch round, in two days, while the milk corrupted 
in the bag and rather diminished in quantity. 
Perhaps by inserting these facts in the Cultivator, it 
may save others from like trouble. 
D. C. C. Wright. 
Granville, O ., Oct. 9, 1846. 
Bed-Bugs. —The common bean-leaf is said to form 
a good trap for catching these troublesome vermin. 
The leaves are placed, bottom upwards, in suitable 
places, and the bugs get their legs tangled in attempting 
to crawl over them. Try it. 
Mr. Editor —There is much in the economy of the 
bee that is wonderful, arid by me is little understood. 
I have, for thirty years, been a keeper of bees, and a 
careful observer of their operations; still I am igno¬ 
rant of many things pertaining to their natural history. 
I have, however, discovered one thing that has inte¬ 
rested me respecting the process by which their honey 
is made, and many years of observation have confirmed 
me in the correctness of my belief. 
The honey is made by the combination of two mate¬ 
rials, the pollen of the flowers, which the bees carry in 
upon their legs, and the nectar which they carry in a 
sack in their bodies. The pollen is deposited in the 
cells of the comb, and dissolved by a chemical solution, 
with the nectar. Just at the time when the solution is 
complete, the cell is capped over, and its contents re¬ 
served for future use. 
I have found this process going on in several stages. 
I have found cells filled or partly filled with the dry 
pollen, of a bright yellow color, as it appears upon the 
legs of the bees. In other cells I have found it a little 
moistened, and turned to a little darker yellow. In 
other cells I have found the top dissolved to liquid 
honey, while the undissolved pollen was at the bottom. 
In other cells I have found the whole mass partially 
dissolved, having the appearance of granulated honey. 
I have been satisfied of these facts by a particular 
examination of many hives, which I have taken up within 
the last fifteen years. Recently a young swarm left a 
hive after making three pieces of comb about six inches 
in diameter. I found in this comb no hone}', but de¬ 
posits of pollen in the bottom of the cells, as above de¬ 
scribed. Had they continued, this comb would doubt¬ 
less have soon been filled with pure honey, the deposits 
of pollen being reduced to a liquid state. 
The general belief I suppose to be, that the pollen, 
which they carry in upon their legs makes the bee- 
bread, and that the honey is only a deposit of the nec¬ 
tar, which they carry in in their bodies. But the bee- 
bread, so called, I believe to be nothing more nor less 
than the damaged materials of the honey, left in an un¬ 
finished state, when their operations are arrested by the 
frosts of autumn, or by any other cause. 
When the process is left unfinished, the materials 
soon become rancid, and mould: and being unfit for 
food, it is left in the cells until the next spring, -when 
the bees may be seen carrying out such portions of it as 
can be detached from the cells, and what cannot be, is 
left to accumulate from year to year, till the old hives 
become very much filled with the bee-bread. 
Very great quantities of pollen are carried . ry 
new hive—enough, I presume, to fill every cell—and yet, 
in a new swarm, you find very little bee-bread, and 
that only in the outskirts of their comb, where their 
works were arrested in an unfinished state at the ap¬ 
proach of autumn. 
Here I would suggest that many bee-keepers suffer 
loss by neglecting to put caps or small boxes upon the 
tops of their hives at the close of the swarming season, 
or about the first week in July. I use boxes about a 
foot square, and six inches deep, and some of my best 
swarms fill two in a season, and yield me from twenty 
to forty pounds of honey. 
Some people have complained that they cannot make 
their bees work up into the boxes. But I have found 
no trouble in this respect. When I make my hives I 
make about six holes with an inch auger, in the top of 
the hive, and cut out the wood so as to bring two or 
more of the holes into one, and place the holes so tha 
they will come near the edge of the box, that the bees 
may have an easy access to the box, and be able to as¬ 
cend its inner side. I have a mouth to the box, the 
same as to the hive, that when they commence opera¬ 
tions, they may not be obliged to pass through the 
original hive to their work. 
When I wish to remove an old hive, I put a box of 
suitable size beneath, and when the breeding season is 
