Next, my own respected teacher, Dr. Lucas, of Reutlingen, remarks, in a note on the foregoing passage—
“This observation of our esteemed friend Jager certainly deserves attention. Whether he is entirely right or not, is to me not altogether clear. I have seen honey dew indiscriminately on young trees and on old of various kinds; but always only after we had several successive hot and dry days, followed by dewless nights. It is very probable that then the juices of plants become more concentrated, and thus more highly charged with saccharine, in so much that drops of liquid sweet may exude through the pores of the leaves, and that then the aphides will quickly resort to the tables thus ready decked for them, and multiply with almost incredible rapidity, is a natural phenomenon observable in the case of other insects also. But that the aphides are the originators of the honey dew, as many foresters and others maintain, can certainly not be accepted as correct and true.”
Allow me, in conclusion, to request bee-keepers and pomologists to watch for the appearance of honey dew on the occurrence of such weather and temperature as above indicated, and to communicate the result of their observations.
A. Arnold,
Travelling Lecturer of the Agricultural Union,
Province of the Rhine.
Löhndorf, June 22, 1870.
[For the American Bee Journal.]
Profitable Bee-keeping.—Letter from England.
The following account shows the very great advantage in keeping bees on the humane and improved system, over the old and barbarous practice of the brimstone match, so clearly, that I send it for your readers to go and do likewise.
In the autumn of 1865, I was at the seaside on the Lancashire coast, and found bees kept in that neighborhood in the most primitive and bad way I ever met with in any country. It was the system there to put the swarm in a large brown wicker basket, and at night to plaster a thin coating of cowdung over the outside, and leave it in this way all summer. I have frequently seen the bees coming out of holes all over the hive, from top to bottom, not being able to fill up all the nicks with propolis, and giving it up as a bad job; and if it was not a good district for honey, they would give up the ghost altogether.