170 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



behaves, the wonderful and almost mystic activity of the bee 

 which may be closely compared to the activity of the human 

 race ; something of the fundamentals in handling bees ; finally, 

 I will show you S(5me pictures. 



BEES FOR HORTICULTURE. 



First of all, I will consider the intimate and important rela- 

 tion of bees to horticulture. The Chairman has already given 

 the key to the situation. I will further make a presumption. 

 If, for instance, by a command, all the bees, both wild and those 

 under domestication, could be wiped out, say from a given dis- 

 trict or locality, it is a safe prophecy that but few fruits and 

 vegetables would set during the following season. In a word, 

 so important in the setting of fruits and vegetables are the 

 honeybees that the supposition might include merely this race 

 of bee life. It is common experience and even the result of ex- 

 perimentation that honeybees do the major part of the work in 

 pollinizing orchard fruits, small fruits and many vegetables. 

 Illustrative of this recognized importance, colonies of bees are 

 now being kept in orchards purposely for their services as car- 

 riers of pollen, the male element of the flower, which is so 

 essentially necessary in the maturation of fruits. Later, when 

 the slides are thrown on the screen, I will show you some of 

 these apiaries in commercial orchards. I will also illustrate 

 what happens to an apple, for instance, if the pollen is not sat- 

 isfactorily deposited on the stamen. It will be seen that the 

 resulting fruit is either malformed, one-sided, lopsided, or other- 

 wise unmarketable. In this connection, fruit growers are recog- 

 nizing more and more that cross pollinization especially, results 

 in larger fruit, with better texture and quality, for it is known 

 that many and perhaps most of our fruits and vegetables require 

 cross pollinization and cross fertilization for their maximum and 

 most satisfactory development. An exception to this is the 

 Baldwin apple, which is, in a measure, self-fertile. 



In Massachusetts, within two or three years, an industry 

 which is worth a million dollars and probably a million and a 

 half dollars to the state, cranberry growing, has demonstrated 

 that this crop is set essentially by the agency of the honeybee. 

 Some other insects, as solitary bees, it is true, play a part, but 

 the honeybee is the important agent. 



