BEE-spoke-data/bees-v0 huggingface dataset:
Alsike is a perennial and grows in low meadows, from Nova Scotia to Idaho. Its blossoms look like that of the white clover, except that they are larger and are tinged with pink. This is a valuable clover for pasturage, and also for hay, and it stands next to the white clover as a honey-plant.
The white clover is the very best plant for producing honey in the United States east of the Rocky Mountains, and the flavour of its honey is famous the world over. While in hard soil, the white clover lasts only two or three years, it is perennial on rich, moist lands. It is a cosmopolitan plant and may be found in almost all regions of the temperate zones. It is an ideal plant for pastures and should be established everywhere on land not under the plow. It shows well its partnership with the bee by turning down its flowerets as soon as they are fertilised, and leaving those in need of pollen still erect. We have seen a head of white clover with a single floweret, erect and white, calling to the bees, while all of its sister flowerets were deflected and brown.
Among the medies we find the veteran of all clovers, the alfalfa, which has been under cultivation for twenty centuries, and came to America with the Spanish invasion. It was established in California in 1854, and has worked its way eastward. But it is only recently that it has been practicable to grow it in the East. This has been made possible by the discovery that it will grow on soil inoculated with its root bacteria. Alfalfa is a true perennial and may be cut for hay three times a season, and is of highest value as fodder or forage. It is a superb honey-plant, furnishing great quantities of light-coloured and excellent honey. It will support more bees to the ace than any other plant known. For artificial pasturage it is the most promising of all honey-plants.
Buckwheat is, in many localities, doubly profitable as a grain and as a honey-plant; especially is it so in middle and western New York, where the hills in autumn are made brilliant with great fields of the
honey, and the grower of small fruits may well add bees to his farm as a source of profit.
## garden flowers
Most of the blooms in flower gardens, as well as vegetable gardens, are worked by the bees. Mignonette is a valuable honey-plant, as it blossoms for a long time. Marjoram, thyme and sage give rich, spicy honey. The sunflower is also a good honeyplant.
## wild flowers and weeds
We shall never forget our profound amazement when we saw, for the first time, in a narrow valley of the Mojave Desert a great city of white bee-hives. Nothing in that desolate landscape could we discern that bore the slightest resemblance to a honey-plant. The gray sage-brush which grew everywhere looked to us about as promising for honey-production as so much slag from a furnace; and yet this sage-brush of the desert gives, the bees the best of pasturage. The bloom begins down in the valley and climbs the mountain side slowly, thus giving bloom for a long period.
There are two species of sage that yield honey, the white and the black, or button sage. They are allied to.the mints, which are generally good honey-plants. We learned to care much for the spicy sage-honey. A professor of Greek, who was for some time in the American school at Athens, tells us that the sage-honey is very similar in flavour to the famous honey of Hymettus, which is made from thymme.
The horse-mint is a very important honey-plant of the lower Mississippi Valley and of Texas. Its corolla tubes are so long that only the Italians and other long-tongued bees can get its honey. Catnip, motherwort and gill-over-the-ground and gall-berry all furnish an abundance of nectar.
The blue thistle emigrated to Virginia in colonial times, and now covers with a heavenly blue thousands of acres of the desolate, uncultivated, red Virginia soil. It is a great boon to the bees of the region, as its blossoms creep slowly up its stalks, thus affording nectar for many weeks. It is related to forage, which is another good honey-plant.
Spider flower (_Cleome pungens_), the Rocky Mountain bee-plant (_Cleome integriifolia_), and figwort (_Serofularia venalis_) have all been planted by beekeepers in their honey-gardens, because they give such a great amount of honey per plant.
During September and early October the bees work busily on the various species of goldenrod and asters, and gather from them a considerable amount of honey, which is rich in colour and taste. The two common species of _Impatiens_ also give the bees good fall pasture.
Fireweed (_Epilobium angustifolium_) comes wherever forests have been cleared and burned off. It blooms late and yields a fine quality of honey. The unlorely Spanish needle (_Coreopsis_) also gives much honey. The milkweed yields good honey, yet it overdoes the matter by loading the feet of the bee with its pollen sacs, until the poor messenger dies of exhaustion under the burden of its message, or dies a prisoner in the blossom.
The cheerful and ubiquitous dandelion has this much in its favour, that it is beloved by the bees and often gives them honey and pollen at a time in the spring when they need it for brood-rearing.
Of all the weeds which will pay the apiarist to establish in waste places, the most profitable are the mellilots, or sweet clovers, of which there are two species, the white and the yellow. These are most benefcent weeds, for they carry nitrogen to the soil like other clovers, and they are easily exterminated by cultivation, so they are not to be feared.
Sweet clover in blossom fills the atmosphere of the country road with perfume, for it is almost everywhere a roadside weed; and, as might be expected, it is most attractive to the bees. While the honey made from it is rather strong in flavour, yet it is of good colour, and sells well. When it is mixed with the honey from other flowers, it adds much to the excellence of the flavour.
## Chapter 2 Bee-keepers and Bee-keeping
Mosr business occupations lead to rivalry and all the selfish emotions incident to competition; not so is bee-keeping; quite the opposite, indeed, as there is a freemasonry that holds bee-keepers together and renders their attitude toward each other friendly and helpful. Bee-keeping is everywhere a bond of brotherhood and a sign of congenial tastes. One night at a dinner-party the gentleman on my right was a stranger, known to me only by reputation as a lawyer of high standing and great crudition. He was reserved and silent, and evidently bored by the trivialities of table-talk. Some one incidentally spoke of our bees, when the face of my neighbour became illumined with interest, and he said, "I am sure that by becoming a lawyer I spoiled a good beekeeper. I have never found anything else so interesting as bee-keeping;" and thus was swept away the curtain of cold conventionalism which had hung between us, and we began, from that moment, to be friends..
Nowhere is this brotherly interest more noticeable than in the bee-books and the bee-journals. The former bear evidence, on every page, of kindness and courtesy to all; while the latter are like friendly correspondence published, wherein John Smith of Maine explains his views on the bee business to Timothy Jones of Oregon, and incidentally sends his kindest regards to the family.
I never take into my hands that delightful book, "A B C of Bee Culture," without turning to the biographies of noted bee-keepers, and looking again at the faces there depicted, noting the noble forehead of Huber; the keen, scholarly face of Dzierzon; the judicial countenance of Friend Quinby and the beautiful expression of the venerable Langstroth. And thus on, page by page, and getting, by the way, a friendly greeting from the kindly eyes of Professor Cook, that most excellent of good teachers; and finally deriving sincere satisfaction from a long look at the keen, humorous face of Mr. A. I. Root himself. These leaders in apiculture are men with whom one is proud to be associated. And the fact that there are, in the United States, 300,000 persons engaged in bee-keeping, makes one hopeful that our republican institutions are to be guarded by intelligent citizenship.
It is interesting to note that knowledge of bees has been given to the world by men who have attained the high peaks of scientific fame. Such knowledge began with Aristotle and Pliny in ancient times, and received no additions during the uncertain Dark Ages. It began anew with Swammerdam, in the seventeenth century, was augmented by Linnaeus, De Geer, Reanumur, Bonnet, Lyonnet, Fabricius, Latreille, Lamarck, and finally reached a climax in the study of the habits of the bee by the blind Huber, who was born in Geneva in 1750. His observations made with his own brain, but with the eyes of his wife, niece and servant, form a classic in bee-literature. In 1811 there were born, a continent apart, two great bee-keepers: Langstroth in Philadelphia, and Dzierzon in Silesia. Both were clerymen, but were also true scientists, and both invented means by which the combs could be moved and examined. Langstroth carried his invention farther, and in 1852 devised the movable frame which revolutionised bee-keeping.
Up to this time the business of the bee-man was largely guess-work. He did not know anything about the condition of his bees in the hive, for he had no way of penetrating that dark chamber. The ways of reaping the honey-harvest were devious; at best the combs were torn from the hives with little regard for the rights and lives of the bees. Finally, there was devised the truly infernal plan of killing the bees with the fumes of burning brimstone, before taking their treasure; this method undoubtedly originating in the turpid theology of the times.
However, about the time of Langstroth, someone, or perhaps many, had discovered that bees stored their honey in the upper part of the hive; and the old box-hive had a few auger-holes in the top, over which was inverted a box, which the bees usually filled, and thus saved themselves from the brimstone pit. We remember well the delight in our family when we used, for the first time, such boxes with glass sides; and as we saw they were being filled with combs, we rejoiced that we need not "'take up" any more swarms, as the suffocation by sulphur fumes was termed.
When, to the invention of the box super, was added the greater invention of Langstroth, and finally thereunto was added the invention of the honey-extractor, bee-keeping became a science, instead of a haphazard avocation.
Bee-keeping in America has since then passed through many phases and survived many experiments. Our bee-keepers have been wide awake and willing to try all things and hold fast to the good. Once, having read of the floating apiaries of the Nile, which follow the flower bloom along the banks, an enthusiast tried the same scheme on the Mississippi River, starting at the southern part early in the season and coming north abreast of the spring, but too many bees were left behind to make this profitable. Another enterprising gentleman took his bees south winters, but the cost of transportation took away the profits. Now, however, another plan for gaining pasturage is proving most successful; \(i.\ e.\), the establishment of out-apiaries. As seventy-five or a hundred colonies will usually take all the nectar of a given locality, the bee-keeper places his surplus colonies in other apiaries far enough distant, so there is good pasturage for all. Mr. A. L. Coggshall has about 3,000 colonies in out-apiaries in central New York.
The up-to-date bee-keeper is not merely an operator in his apiary, but a co-operator with his bees, and we firmly believe that the bees are being educated by the partnership, as well as the beekeeper. Bees certainly do learn by experience, as is well instanced by some Cyprians, which, in their native home, build columns of wax and propolis at the hive-entrance to keep out the large death's-head moth which preys upon them. After living in this country for two years, the bees discovered that there were none of these moths about, and so ceased building these bars. The readiness with which our bees use the comb-foundation and fit their combs to the frames and follow the hint given by the starters in the sections, all point to their adaptability; and however others may regard the matter, we never take off a section filled with just one pound of pearly comb and amber honey that we do not pay tribute to'the bee intelligence which placed it there, and regard the little artisans as true partners in our enterprise. And we never doubt that in the future this co-operation and co-education of bees and beekeepers will result in a perfection of honey-production as yet undreamed.
## Chapter 2 Xx
Bee-Hunting
The mere mention of these words always brings to us memories of high hills, wound about by picturesque roads, bordered by rail fences, from the corners of which the goldenrod still flung its banners to the breeze, though September and, mayhap, frosts had come. Beyond the fences were kindly pastures, cropped close except where the mulein, the thistle and the immortelle vaunted their immunity from the attacks of grazing herds; and still beyond were upland meadows, green with second-crop clover; and crowning all were forests beginning to glow with autumnal hues. Forth into such roads, pastures, meadows and woodlands were we'wont to fare of a sunny morning, to hunt bees with our father, whose woodcraft was not the empty accomplishment of the man of this generation, but was attained on those same hills of western New York when he was a pioneer boy, and the deer and the wolves roamed those forests, and the beaver's built their dams in the valley.
Our equipment for hunting was a bottle of diluted honey; a box with a sliding glass cover, containing pieces of empty comb; and a sharp stake, four feet high, topped with a cross-piece on which to set thebox. When we were far enough afield, some unwary bee was lifted from its goldenrod revel and imprisoned in the box, where one of the empty combs had been filled from the bottle for her special dedication. Like a worthy bee, she began to fill at once; meanwhile, the stake was pushed into the ground and the box placed upon it, the cover removed, and we all retired for a little distance to watch. When the bee finally lifted herself and our honey into the air, we gave her closest attention. To make sure of the exact position of her bonanza, she always arose in a spiral, each circle being larger than the one before, and finally turned the spiral in a certain direction. When she suddenly darted away with almost the speed of a bullet, it was always the eyes of our father, blue as the sky against which the bee was outlined, that detected her direction; for young eyes, however keen, counted little against trained eyes in this competition.
Then there always followed a time of anxious waiting for the return of the bee. Meanwhile we stretched out on the dry sod in the sun and listened to the chirping of the crickets, or the sweet notes of the meadow larks and itly watched a hawk circle on even pinions above our heads; or we told stories of other days of successful bee-hunting. If the bee returned within fifteen minutes, all was well and we were confident that the tree was distant not much more than a mile. But if we had to wait a half hour we usually caught other bees and started over again, hoping to find some nearer colony. If our first visitor came back soon, and especially if she was followed by her anxious sisters, we were satisfied. With several bees flying in the same direction, it was always easy to get the "'line," which we marked by some peculiar tree or other noticeable object in the landscape. When several of our visitors were eagerly filling themselves with honey, the cover was shoved over them and they were carried for a distance along the line and then liberated, and the line from this new location ascertained. Thus were they followed, up hill and down dale, and even through woodlands; finally, we would come to a place in a forest where we could follow the line no farther, and then we took our first lesson in geometry by getting a cross-line. This was done by carrying some of the bees in the box for some rods to the right or left; and when they were established there we knew that at the apex of the angle made by the two intersecting lines stood the bee-tree.
The triumph which filled us when we finally discovered that stream of black particles entering some knothole or the broken top of a tree, made us breathless; and all the way home we tried to temper our excitement so as to make the announcement of our discovery with a nonchalance characteristic of invariably successful hunters.
However, we were by no means always successful. Sometimes it would be too late in the day before we established a line; and again a line would lead us in a disgusting fashion to some unsuspected apiary; and now and then in a woodland tangle we crossed and crisscrossed lines, nearly breaking our necks gazing into tree-tops, all to no avail. Then, too, even our victory might be tempered by conditions. If the bee-tree were small, we judged it contained little honey; if the tree were valuable, we doubted if the owner would allow it to be cut. As a matter of fact, we seldom cut a bee-tree; and when we did, we wrested from it a combination of rotten wood, bee-bread, crushed brood and bees that made a potpourri which would prove disastrous to the enefebled stomachs of this generation. But, though we rarely cut a bee-tree, bee-hunting lost none of its fascination. For what could be more delightful than long days spent in the autumn sunshine, envisioned by an occupation vitally interesting that needs must be lazily carried on! So we never gave it up until the October frosts had killed all the flowers, and the fumes of the honey-comb that we burned failed to entice an enterprising bee from her winter quarters to our box.
## Appendix A Bee Books
The bibliography of bee literature is extensive. Scientists of all nations have contributed the results of their investigations on bee anatomy and bee physiology, and have made bee literature, as a whole, most profound and technical reading. However, there are among these books many that were written for popular audiences, and that deal with the practical side of bee-keeping; of such we add a few titles of those best known and of special excellence.
Benton, Frank. "The Honey Bee." Mr. Benton, who is our national expert of the Department of Agriculture at Washington, always writes practically, and has carried on experiments with races of bees, which the private bee-keeper could hardly afford to make. The enterprising bee-keeper should keep in close touch with Mr. Benton's bulletins.
Cheshire, Frank R. Two volumes. This is one of the finest works that has ever been published upon the honey-bee and bee-keeping. It is delightfully written and has many fine illustrations.
Cook, Professor Albert J. "The Bee-keeper's Guide or Manual of the Apiary." This is the most extensive of all the bee-keeping manuals written for American bee-keepers. It deals with all phases of the subject minutely, and new editions are published frequently enough to keep the book up-to-date. Professor Cook has a wide reputation as a most excellent teacher, and bee-keeping is one of the subjects which he taught for years in the Agricultural College of Michigan.
## I N D E X
ABC of Bee Culture, 107.
Akofonen, 187.
After-swarms led by virgin queen, 81.
prevention of, 81.
reason of and remedy for, 79, 81.
AlAlfa, 154.
AlAlfa, 304.
Alghains board, 15.
Alimentary canal, 887, 191, Plates XXV., XXVI.
Alley's queen and droce trap, 11.
Allele, 100.
Anatomy, external, 181, Plate XXV.
internal, 187, Plate XXVI.
Antenna cleaner, 186, Plate VII.
Antenax, 183, Plate VII.
Ants, 17.
Apiaries, floating, 109.
out, 269.
Apiary, high fence for, in city, 23.
in village garden, 22.
location and arrangement of, 20.
moving the, \(\sharp\)3.
old-fashioned, Plate XXVII.
old orchard good place for, no.
on city house tops, 23.
sheep in, \(\sharp\)3.
windbreak for, 23.
Apparatus for extracting, Plate XXVII.
Apple, 196.
Apple blossoms, Plate XVII.
Apelicot, 196.
Aristsole, 173, 807.
Artificial pasturage, 199.
_Raitius aluei_, 176.
Balling of queen, 32, 158.
Basswood, 198.
blossoms, feontispiece.
Bee, anatomy of, 181.
books, 266.
brush, Plate III.
brush, Plate, 19.
brush, use of, 181.
cellars, for wintering, the Bangham, 151.
gloves, 11, 17.
glue, its source, 60, 61.
glue made from varnish and cement, 61.
glue, various uses of, 64.
house-keepers, 34- -
how the gather pollen, 59.
how the collects propolis, 6a.
infariude, 44.
journals, 266.
month, 171.
month, development of, 173.
month, how to detect, 173.
month, maximums, 176.
month, remedy for, 174.
tent, 188.
tree, 314.
well, 11, 16.
worker, 39.
worker, brains of, 40.
worker--life and habits of, 42, 43.
worker, sex of, 39.
See-breach, 59.
as food, (co.
in cells, 98.
INDEX--Continued 221
egin{tabular}{l l} egin{tabular}{l} Brood frames, examining of, Plate \ XIII. \ how to lift out, g6. \ Brushing or shaking-out method to \ control swarming, 77. \ Buckwheat, zoi. \ Buckwheat in blossom, Plate XXIX. \ Cabbage palmetto, 199. \ Cages, queen, 160, 161. \ Candy for feeding bees, how to \ make, 141. \ Good, 141, 161. \ Cam for shipping extracted honey \ in bulk, 113. \ Carmolan bees, 47. \ Carton for comb-honey, 106, 113. \ Catnip, zoi. \ Cell of queen, zoi. \ Cellars for wintering bees, zoi. \ Cerasin, wax adulterant, 134. \ Chaff hives, 11, 14. \ Chaff hives for wintering, 148, \ Plate XXII. \ Chyle food, 16. \ how regurgitated, g8. \ City apiary, zoi. \ Cleome, zoi. \ Clipping wings of queen, 75. \ Clover, zoo. \ Cogshall, zoo. \ Colonies, how to unite, 81. \ Colony, queenless, zoi. \ quenclass, Mr. Root's method \ of testing, 159, 160. \ Comb building, Plate IX. \ built by many workers, g6. \ drone, 37. \ cell caps, construction of, g6. \ foundation for brood chamber,85. \ how to tell honey from brood in \ capped cells, g7. \ made without pollen, g0. \ making, described by A. I. Root, \ 53. \ making, Prof. V. L. Kellogg's \ observation of, 53. \ mathematics of, 54. \ placing in extractor, Plate XIX. \ shape of, not fortuitous, 54. \ strength of, 56. \ uncapping of, Plate XIX. \ Comb-honey and large hives, 77. \ bee moth in, 174, 175. \ candidied, 115. \ compared with extracted honey, \ 106, 114. \ conditions for production of, t07. \ grading of, 112. \ how to keep, 116. \ how to make, 106. \ in 8-frame hive, 14. \ marketing of, 114. \ maxims for producers of, t16. \ shipping of, 113. \ storing of, 115. \ Combs for extracting, Plate XVIII. \ Cook, Prof. A. J., method of uniting \ colonies, 82, zoi7. \ observation on bee moth, 172. \ _Corrogani, zoi._ \ Cornell smoker, 11, 16. \ how to use, 93. \ Cora, 185. \ Crabapple blonoma, Plate XXVIII. \ Crimson clover, zoo. \ Cuticle, 182, Plate XXV. \ Cyprian, 47, zio. \ \end{tabular} \ egin{tabular}{l l}
egin{tabular}{l} \multicolumn{1}{l}{\multicolumn{1}{l}{\(\circ\)}} \ \multicolumn{1}{l}{\(\circ\)} \ \multicolumn{1}{l}{\(\circ
Foundation-comb--_Continued_ for sections, how to cut, 89. hove to place in frame, 85, 86. site of, 86. Foundation-fastener, Daisy, 17. Parker, 18. super, 17. for extracted honey, 119. foundation for, 84- Framea, Hoffman brood, 86. Hoffman self-spacing, 84- Langatroth movable, 84. self-spacing, Plate XII. spacing of, 84. Fruit, not punctured by bees, 196. Fruit trees, 196, 197.
Gall-berry, 206. _Galerkin mall-media_, 172. Garden flowers, 205. German bees compared with Italians, 43. German steam wax press, 133- Gill-over-the-ground, 104. Glands, 189. Glands of honey bee, Plate XXV. Goldenrod, 104. Grapes, not punctured by bees, 197. Guagilla, 199.