FORTY-FIFTH ANNUAL REPORT. 77 



bees are often killer! l)y our severe winters and reall.y play only a minor 

 part in the fertilization of onr spring bloom. But those localities hav- 

 ing an abundance of honey bees in addition to their native bees are in- 

 sured a large crop nevertheless. 



Since bees are, therefore, so fundamentally necessary for maximum 

 fruit returns, why are they not more generally kept by Michigan horti- 

 culturists? Possibly it may be due to erroneous impressions concern- 

 ing the industry, one being that it does not pay, another that the bee 

 is an animal rather to be admired from the distance and third, that the 

 bee is largely instrumental in distributing blight and injuring fruit. 



The strength of the first object, that bee-keeping is not profitable, 

 will depend entirely upon the man himself. Mr. E. L. Hoffman, on his 

 200 acre grain farm at Janesville, Minnesota, last year extracted :>.") 

 tons of honey, thus giving him returns of over .*i?7,000.00. 



The second objection, namely, that the bee is vicious and hard to 

 han<lle, is entirely disproven, for with considerate treatment, bees al- 

 low the keeper to handle them with impunity. Tho subject of stings 

 may be dismissed with two comforting considerations, first bees seldom 

 sting during swarming time when they are mostly handled and second, 

 one soon becomes immune to stings. 



The last objection raised is that bees are destructive in the orchard 

 by spreading blight and injuring fruit. Bees can not be held responsi- 

 ble for spread of blight for other insects do the same work and even 

 though the honey bee were absent, it would be spread quite the same. 

 Great injury has also been done the bee through the accusation that it 

 punctured the ripe fruit. Investigators, particularly of the United 

 States I)ei»artment of Agriculture, have proven conclusively that bees 

 will starve to death before puncturing the skin of ripe fruits although 

 they often sip the Qozing juices after the skin has been broken by sonie 

 other agency. 



A few years ago, California fruit growers raised such a i^rotest that 

 the bee-keepers were forced to mo\'e their bees from the neighborhood. 

 The following year the crop fell off to such an alarming extent that they 

 implored the bee-keepers to return, whereupon the crop returned to 

 its original yield. 



If we horticulturists would therefore, keep abreast of the times, we 

 should also become bee keepers not onl}' to insure our fruit crop but 

 .also to utilize another of the by-products of the orchard and garden 

 and to save for human use a recourse now so generally wasted. 



