. American bee journal. Bee culture; Bees. Read before Mich. Agri'l Col. Nat. His. So'y, June 20. Honey Dow on the Tamarack. PROF. A. J. COOK. During the last week of May, 1879, the American larch or tamarack, stand- ing near the house occupied by Prof. Beal, was discovered to be swarming with bees. Upon closer inspection the needle-shaped leaves were discovered to b » thickly dotted with drops of thick viscid nectar. Many of these drops were sufficiently large to enable one to test the .uality of their saccharine ele- ment. The sweet was very pleasant, much like that of syrup made from granul
. American bee journal. Bee culture; Bees. Read before Mich. Agri'l Col. Nat. His. So'y, June 20. Honey Dow on the Tamarack. PROF. A. J. COOK. During the last week of May, 1879, the American larch or tamarack, stand- ing near the house occupied by Prof. Beal, was discovered to be swarming with bees. Upon closer inspection the needle-shaped leaves were discovered to b » thickly dotted with drops of thick viscid nectar. Many of these drops were sufficiently large to enable one to test the .uality of their saccharine ele- ment. The sweet was very pleasant, much like that of syrup made from granulated sugar. The drops were clear, colorless and not unlike dew drops in t^eir appearance. I closely examined the twigs for plant lice, but lookf i in vain. I only examined the lower limbs which could be observed from the ground. Two weeks after I received larch twigs from A. A. Winslow, New Hol- stejn,Wis., with a letter stating that the tree from which the twigs were taken was full of large drops of beau- tiful honey, which the bees were very rapidly storing in the honey boxes. Upon examining these twigs I found them well sprinkled with grains of su- gar. The sugar was very white and tasted very much like our best granu- lated sugar. Mr. Winslow also in- closed leaves of deciduous trees which were under the tamarack boughs. These were coated with sugar, and appeared as if they had been dipped into a con- centrated syrup of coffee sugar, and then allowed to dry. Here, then, it seemed that we had a veritable case of honey dew, not from insect secretion, but an exudation from the leaves. For the past four weeks I have repeatedly examined the twigs of the larch, each time to find the drops of nectar, but each time failed to find any lice, until early the present week when I found even' on the lower twigs the tamarack louse, Lachnus caricifex Fitch. But I had found the nectar be- fore the lice, and when there were only hundreds of lice, there were millions of nectar drops. The lic
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Keywords: ., bo, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1860, booksubjectbees, bookyear1861
