Manual of the apiary

by Albert John Cook

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.

WHAT ARE THE VALUABLE HONEY PLANTS?

In the northeastern part of our country the chief reliance for May is the fruit-blossoms, willows, and sugar maples. In June white clover yields largely of the most attractive honey, both as to appearance and flavor. In July the incomparable basswood makes both bees and apiarist jubilant. In August buckwheat offers a tribute, which we welcome, though it be dark and pungent in flavor, while with us in Michigan, August and September give us a profusion of bloom which yields to no other in the richness of its capacity to secrete honey, and is not cut-off till the autumn frosts—usually about September 15.

Thousands of acres of golden rod, boneset, asters, and other autumn flowers of our new northern counties, as yet have blushed unseen, with fragrance wasted. This unoccupied territory, unsurpassed in its capability for fruit production, covered with grand forests of maple and basswood, and spread with the richest of autumn bloom, offers opportunities to the practical apiarist rarely equaled except in the Pacific States, and not even there, when other privileges are considered. In these localities, two or three hundred pounds to the colony is no surprise to the apiarist, while even four or five hundred are not isolated cases.

In the following table will be found a list of valuable honey-plants. Those in the first column are annual, biennial or perennial; the annual being enclosed in a parenthesis thus: (); the biennial enclosed in brackets thus: []; while those in the second column are shrubs or trees; the names of shrubs being enclosed in a parenthesis. The date of commencement of bloom is, of course, not invariable. The one appended, in case of plants which grow in our State, is about average for Central Michigan. Those plants whose names appear in small capitals yield very superior honey. Those with (a) are useful for other purposes than honey secretion. All but those with a * are native or very common in Michigan. Those written in the plural refer to more than one species. Those followed by a † are very numerous in species. Of course I have not named all, as that would include some hundreds which have been observed at the college, taking nearly all of the two great orders Compositæ and Rosaceæ. I have only aimed to give the most important, omitting many foreign plants of notoriety, as I have had no personal knowledge of them: