REPORTS OF AUXILIARY SOCIETIES. 291 



GEEENVILLE HOETICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



OFFICERS FOR 1883. 



President — J. C. Stoughton. 



Vice-President — B. S. Bigley. 



Secretary — John E. Taylor. 



Treasurer — Mrs. Jas. W. Belknap. 



Secretary Taylor in sending in the list of officers makes the following per- 

 sonal observations which are certainly worth considering by orchardists, and 

 his request for assistance in observing is a very reasonable one. 



In the spring of 1880 my father's orchard bloomed very abundantly and the 

 honey bees stored large quantities of honey from the blossoms. There was an. 

 unusually large crop of apples. In 1881 the orchard blossomed as full as 

 usual. The bumble bees were seen in large numbers working upon the blossoms, 

 but there were no honey bees to be found about them. There was but a poor 

 yield of fruit in the fall. In the spring of 1883, excepting upon four trees, 

 few bees of any variety were seen about the abundant blossoms. The four 

 trees excepted stood near a spring and the honey bees made loud music about 

 them for several days. The four trees, two of an unknown sweet variety, and 

 two of the Snow apple, yielded an abundance of fine fruit. The balance of 

 the orchard yielded a very few apples of very inferior quality. Now will some 

 one else join me in observing this class of phenomena and note minute details 

 that may reach some system of predicting in the spring what will be the fall 

 yield of fruit. Some of my neighbors do not laugh at me as much as they did 

 for saying that there will be a poor crop of apples when the honey bee fails to 

 do its duty in fertilizing the flowers. 



