CONSPICUOUS FLOWERS RARELY VISITED BY INSECTS 167 



proved only temporary. Under normal conditions, then, honey- 

 bees do not frequently resort to the red clover fields; but occa- 

 sionally in very dry weather the floral tubes become so short 

 that large yields of honey are obtained. Two or three times 

 during the last thirty years at Borodino, N. Y., red clover has 

 been a very valuable source of honey; and one season fully sixty 

 pounds, on an average, to a colony was secured. ^ An apiarist 

 in Michigan reports that in one year his bees stored 500 pounds 

 of pure red clover honey as surplus." The black bees stored 

 none, the hybrids only a little, while the bulk of the 500 pounds 

 was gathered by Italian bees. The length of the tongue of the 

 common black bee is 6 mm., of the pure Italians, not over 7 mm., 

 while that of the hybrids is intermediate. Thus there was pre- 

 sented the singular spectacle of fields of red clover visited by 

 thousands of Italian bees, while the black bees were absent. 

 Had the drought shortened the corolla tubes another millimeter 

 the nectar would have been accessible to black bees, and they, 

 too, would have been present. 



But undoubtedly the most remarkable illustration ever recorded 

 of the relation of rainfall to the length of the corolla-tubes, and 

 consequently of the accessibility of the nectar to honey-bees, 

 was observed by an apiarist at Medina, Ohio. Of two apiaries 

 belonging to him one is located near Medina, and the other two 

 miles north of that city. A few years ago (1906) there was a 

 drouth at the north bee-yard, and the floral tubes of the red clover 

 were so much shorter than usual that honey-bees were able to 

 reach the nectar. When one of the farmers began to cut his 

 field of red clover that season, the cutter knives of the mower 

 stirred up so many bees that they attacked the horses and their 

 driver. So numerous and pugnacious were they that it looked 

 as though they would prevent anyone from cutting off their 

 supply of honey. 



Singularly enough at Medina and the south bee-yard, there was 

 an abundance of rain. Here, when he went over a big field 

 covered with a luxuriant growth of red clover scarcely a bee 

 could be found. The corolla- tubes were so long that the bees 

 could not obtain the nectar, and consequently, there were none 

 on the clover heads. Thus two bee-keepers, living only a few 



33 Doolittle, G. M., " Honey from Red Clover," Gleanings in Bee Culture, 34:993. 



34 Hutchinson, W. Z., " Red Clover," The Bee- Keepers' Review, 21:342. 



