COMB-HONEY.
This, from its wondrous beauty, especially when light-colored and immaculate, will always be a coveted article for the table, and will ever, with proper care, bring the highest price paid for honey. So it will always be best to work for this, even though we may not be able to procure it in such ample profusion as we may the extracted. He who has all kinds, will be able to satisfy every demand, and will most surely meet with success.
RULES TO BE OBSERVED.
This, too, should be chiefly in small sections ([Fig, 50]), for, as before stated, such are the packages that surely sell. Sections from four to six inches square will just fill a plate nicely, and look very tempting to the proud house-wife, especially if some epicurean friends are to be entertained.
The sections should surely be in place at the dawn of the white clover season, so that the apiarist may secure the most of this irresistible nectar, chaste as if capped by the very snow itself. They should be taken away as soon as capped, as delay makes them highways of travel for the bees, which always mar their beauty.
When removed, if demanded, glass the sections, but before this, we should place them in hives one upon another, or special boxes made tight, with a close cover, in which to store either brood-frames in winter or sections at any season, and sulphur them. This is quickly and easily done by use of the smoker. Get the fire in the smoker well to burning, add the sulphur, then place this in the top hive, or top of the special box. The sulphurous fumes will descend and deal out death to all moth larvæ. This should always be done before shipping the honey, if we regard our reputations as precious. It is well to do this immediately upon removal, and also two weeks after, so as to destroy the moth larvæ not hatched when the sections are removed.
If separators have been used, these sections are in good condition to be glassed, and are also in nice shape to ship even without glass, as they may stand side by side and not mar the comb.
Fig. 71.
The shipping-crate ([Fig, 71]) should be strong, neat and cheap, with handles as seen in [Fig, 71]—such handles are also convenient in the ends of the hives, and can be cut in an instant by having the circular-saw set to wabble. With handles the crate is more convenient, and is more sure to be set on its bottom. The crate should also be glassed, as the sight of the comb will say: "Handle with care."
Mr. Heddon also makes a larger crate ([Fig, 72]), which is neat and cheap. Muth's crate is like Heddon's, only smaller.
It is well, too, to wrap the sections in paper, as thus breakage of one will not mean general ruin. However, this would be unnecessary in case the sections were of veneer and glassed, as before described.
Fig. 72.
In groceries, where the apiarist keeps honey for sale, it will pay him to furnish his own boxes. These should be made of white-wood, very neat, and glassed in front to show the honey, and the cover so fixed that unglassed sections—and these, probably, will soon become the most popular—cannot be punched or fingered. Be sure, too, that the label, with kind of honey, grade, and name of apiarist, be so plain that "he who runs may read."
Comb-honey that is to be kept in the cool weather of autumn, or the cold of winter, must be kept in warm rooms, or the comb will break from the section when handled. By keeping it quite warm for some days previous to shipment, it may be sent to market even in winter, but must be handled very carefully, and must make a quick transit.
Above all, let "taste and neatness" ever be your motto.
CHAPTER XVI.
HONEY PLANTS.
As bees do not make honey, but only gather it, and as honey is mainly derived from certain flowers, it of course follows that the apiarist's success will depend largely upon the abundance of honey-secreting plants in the vicinity of his apiary. True it is that certain bark and plant lice secrete a kind of liquid sweet—honey of doubtful reputation—which, in the dearth of anything better, the bees seem glad to appropriate. I have thus seen the bees thick about a large bark-louse which attacks the tulip tree, and thus often destroys one of our best honey trees. This is an undescribed species of the genus Lecanium. I have also seen them thick about three species of plant lice. One, the Pemphigus imbricator, Fitch, works on the beech tree. Its abdomen is thickly covered with long wool, and it makes a comical show as it wags this up and down upon the least disturbance. The leaves of trees attacked by this louse, as also those beneath the trees, are fairly gummed with a sweetish substance. I have found that the bees avoid this substance, except at times of extreme drouth and long protracted absence of honeyed bloom. It was the source of no inconsiderable stores during the terribly parched autumn of Chicago's great disaster. (See [Appendix, page 286]).
Another species of Pemphigus gives rise to certain solitary plum-like galls, which appear on the upper surface of the red elm. These galls are hollow, with a thin skin, and within the hollows are the lice, which secrete an abundant sweet that often attracts the bees to a feast of fat things, as the gall is torn apart, or cracks open, so that the sweet exudes. This sweet is anything but disagreeable, and may not be unwholesome to the bees.
Another aphis, of a black hue, works on the branches of our willows, which they often entirely cover, and thus greatly damage another tree valuable for both honey and pollen. Were it not that they seldom are so numerous two years in succession, they would certainly banish from among us one of our most ornamental and valuable honey-producing trees. These are fairly thronged in September and October, and not unfrequently in spring and summer if the lice are abundant, by bees, wasps, ants, and various two-winged flies, all eager to lap, up the oozing sweets. This louse is doubtless the Lachnus dentatus, of Le Baron, and the Aphis salicti, of Harris.
Bees also get, in some regions, a sort of honey-dew, which enables them to add to their stores with surprising rapidity. I remember one morning while riding on horse-back along the Sacramento river, in California, I broke off a willow twig beside the road when, to my surprise, I found it was fairly decked with drops of honey. Upon further examination I found the willow foliage was abundantly sprinkled by these delicious drops. These shrubs were undisturbed by insects, nor were they under trees. Here then was a real case of honey-dew, which must have been distilled through the night by the leaves. I never saw any such phenomenon in Michigan, yet others have. Dr. A. H. Atkins, an accurate and conscientious observer, has noted this honey-dew more than once here in Central Michigan.
Bees also get some honey from oozing sap, some of questionable repute from about cider mills, some from grapes and other fruit which have been crushed, or eaten and torn by wasps and other insects. That bees ever tear the grapes is a question of which I have failed to receive any personal proof, though for years I have been carefully seeking it. I have lived among the vineyards of California, and have often watched bees about vines in Michigan, but never saw bees tear open the grapes. I have laid crushed grapes in the apiary, when the bees were not gathering, and were ravenous for stores, which, when covered with sipping bees, were replaced with sound grape-clusters, which in no instance were mutilated. I have thus been led to doubt if bees ever attack sound grapes, though quick to improve the opportunities which the oriole's beak and the stronger jaws of wasps offer them. Still, Prof. Riley feels sure that bees are sometimes thus guilty, and Mr. Bidwell tells me he has frequently seen bees rend sound grapes, which they did with their feet. Yet, if this is the case, it is certainly of rare occurrence, and is more than compensated by the great aid which the bees afford the fruit-grower in the great work of cross-fertilization, which is imperatively necessary to his success, as has been so well shown by Dr. Asa Gray and Mr. Chas. Darwin. It is true that cross-fertilization of the flowers, which can only be accomplished by insects, and early in the season by the honey-bee, is often, if not always, necessary to a full yield of fruit and vegetables. I am informed by Prof W. W. Tracy, that the gardeners in the vicinity of Boston keep bees that they may perform this duty. Even then, if Mr. Bidwell and Prof. Riley are right, and the bee does, rarely—for surely this is very rare, if ever—destroy grapes, still they are, beyond any possible question, invaluable aids to the pomologist.
But the principal source of honey is still from the flowers.