REPORT OF THE STATE ENTOMOLOGIST I17 



On Arsenical Spraying of Fruit Trees while in Blossom. 



(Read before the Association of Economic Entomologists at its Fifth Annual meeting, 



at Madison, Wis., August 16, 1893.)* 



Are Honey-Bees Killed by Arsenical Spraying? 



The long-mooted question, are honey-bees poisoned by arsenical spray- 

 ing, is still an unsettled one. There are those who claim that a great 

 mortality among bees is the result of their visiting blossoms that have 

 been sprayed with Paris green, while others hold that the mortality so 

 frequently observed at this time is ascribable to other causes, and that 

 the arsenic would not reach the nectar of blossoms, and, being an insol- 

 uble substance, could not affect the bees or be communicated to the 

 honey. This latter view has been entertained by some of our best 

 botanists. The pollen, however, might contain arsenic and thus become 

 poisonous, not only to the bees visiting the blossoms, but also to the nearly- 

 matured, chyme-fed larvze to whom it might be conveyed. 



Experiments by Professor ^A^ebste^. 



In behalf of a committee appointed by the Association of Economic 

 Entomologists to investigate the matter, Prof F. M. Webster, of the 

 Agricultural Experiment Station of Ohio, chairman of the committee, has 

 recently reported progress in the investigations undertaken, to the follow- 

 ing effect : He had experimented with a hive of bees placed underneath 

 a sprayed plum tree wholly inclosed with a fine netting. Within two days 

 thereafter a large number of dead bees were taken up from the cloth with 

 which the ground had been covered. Without much doubt, most of these 

 had been killed in their efforts to escape from their confinement. Ex- 

 amination of the bodies of the dead insects before washing and after they 

 had been washed to remove any arsenic that had been attached to their 

 surface from contact with the sprayed blossoms, gave the examining 

 chemist the presence of arsenic. In another experiment made, hives of 

 bees were placed under sprayed trees, but without any inclosing net. 

 These also gave dead bees with arsenic upon them, but in much smaller 

 number.t 



*Published in Insect Life, December, vi, 1893, pp. 181-185. 



t It is possible that these bees may have been caught and killed by some of the predaceous 

 insects which are known to lie in wait among or near blossoms, whence they suddenly seize the 

 bees and suck out their juices, such as the bee-slayer, Phyntata erosa and several of the " robber 

 flies " or Asilidae, of which Prof. A. J. Cook records six species having this habit. 



