290 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 Sspr., 1899. 
Apiculture. 
BEES AND FRUIT. 
Tue question as to whether bees injure fruit is a very old one, and has 
often cropped up, and has often been settled in favour of the bee. Any 
entomologist knows that the antenne of the bee are incapable of cutting into 
the skin of sound fruit, and in order to make a start he must first find a hole 
already made by some other insect, such as the ant. Yet it is quite true he 
will bite through the wooden division boards of a hive. 
This point was once raised at a meeting of the beekeepers’ association, and 
an explanation demanded. An expert present answered by asking the question : 
“ Why is it that, although a man can bite through a piece of plaster, he cannot 
make a hole with his teeth through a plaster wall?” Yet you say you have 
seen bees which looked as though they were searching for a weak spot on sound 
fruit upon which to make an attack, although you very cautiously add that you 
did not see them actually succeed in piercing the fruit. Bees, although possessed 
of instinct in the largest degree, are very stupid in many things; and one may 
often see them trying for hours to do something, which, if they had any reason, 
they would have known to be a physical impossibility. 
But there is no need to confine ourselves to theory only. The practical test 
has often been made of placing absolutely sound fruit in the vicinity of bees, 
care having been first taken to examine the fruit microscopically, to see that it 
was uninjured. In every case, although the bees have ireweieel around, they 
have ultimately abandoned it untouched.—Martin’s Home and Farm. 
H. W. Brice says that the fruit crop ona farm near one of his apiaries is 
worth £100 a year more than it was without the bees.— Gleanings. 
VARIETIES OF HONEY. 
One would scarcely suppose that there was so much difference in honey, and 
that there are a great number of varieties (says an American authority on bees) 5 
and his remarks should be of interest to our own beekeepers. Although 
conditions may not be the same, they are similar in some respects. There are 
almost as many varieties as there are different flowers that produce honey, and 
the difference in flavour is very perceptible. Since the introduction of the 
extractor, it is possible to keep each variety separate to quite an extent, and 
hence the opportunity it affords to see and taste the honey from the different 
flowers. 
These varieties of honey also differ materially in colour. There are 
scarcely any two varieties of the same shade, and there are all shades from 
white or light down to dark or nearly black. : 
Buckwheat (which always got more credit than it ever deserved) produces 
the darkest grade of honey, or at least as dark as the darkest, and which would 
in any established market bring the lowest price. The only value of a crop of 
buckwheat honey is that it usually comes when other flowers are not producing 
nectar, being later in the season, and it keeps the queens busy laying and brood- 
rearing thus continually, which is very beneficial. 
Various other plants and trees furnish a second grade—amber-coloured 
honey—a very beautiful golden colour, and which by a great many persons is 
preferred to any other. This honey is produced by nearly all fruit-producing 
trees and shrubs, and many wild flowers also. In the south-eastern States of 
America the poplar, or white wood, is the leader in this respect; and the famed 
white sage of the West is the same in that locality, especially California. 
