304 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Bees and Fruit. 



By J. W. Rouse, Mexico, Mo. 



It is sometimes charged that bees are injurious to fruit-growing — 

 especially to grapes. 



Bees do sometimes work on grapes in a dry time, that is, when 

 nectar is scarce ; but bees can only work on grapes after some bird or 

 some other insect has cut the skin, or the grape has become over ripe 

 and the skin has cracked or bursted. 



It is sometimes charged that the bees cut through the skin of the 

 grape themselves, but such is not the case, as they have no cutting or 

 biting apparatus whereby they can cut or puncture the sound skin of 

 the grape. The mandibles of the honey-bee are so constructed that 

 while they can extract the nectar from flowers, they have no cutting 

 edges. 



The wasps, hornets and yellow-jackets do have cutting edges like 

 sawteeth on their mandibles, so that they can and do cut the skin of 

 the grapes, and the bees follow them up and finish the work they have 

 commenced, and thus often save what might go to waste. 



Dadant & Son, of Hamilton, Illinois, who are large apiarists and 

 also grape growers, on one occasion, when taking in their grapes, 

 found the bees working on the grapes very much. After removing all 

 the grapes under cover except one bunch for experiment, the bees 

 covered the bunch and worked on the grapes for several hours. It 

 was found in the evening, after the bees had left, that they had not 

 been able to cut through tlie skin of a single grape. 



Mr. I. P. Israel, of Olivenhaim, California, who is an apiarist and 

 raisin-grower, says he is glad to have the bees work on the raisins so 

 as to get all the unsound or injured fruit removed. 



In a test made by Professor McLain of the United States Experi- 

 ment station (see Report of 1885), with 30 dififerent varieties of grapes, 

 and after making tests in every conceivable way, such as nearly starv- 

 ing the bees and then giving them grapes, and even after pouring both 

 syrup and honey over the grapes, the bees taking the syrup and honey 

 greedily, in no case case could he induce the bees to cut through 

 the sound skin of a single grape. As Professor McLain had no ax to 

 grind he made a thorough test. 



In a friendly newspaper controversy with a noted writer and well- 

 informed gentleman of my home city, this gentleman assumed that 

 the bees did cut through the skin of the grape, and in my reply I 



