Relaiion ok Bkks to Fruit Cur/ruRR. 253 



THE RELATION OF BEES TO FRUIT 



CULTURE. 



BY JAMES E. CRANE, OF BRIDPORT. 



I have chosen as the subject of this essay, "The liela- 

 tion of Bees to Fniit Culture" and general agriculture, 

 and shall attempt to explain the part these insects take in 

 tlie fertilization of flowers and their relations to certain 

 fruits ; and, if I may tlirow some light u2:)on the minds of 

 those persons, otlierwise well informed, who regard the 

 presence of honey bees as injurious to their crops of fruit 

 or fields of clover, lest they shoidd visit their flowers and 

 rifle their sweets, I shall feel" repaid for this effort. 



This belief of many tillers of the soil, that injury is done 

 by the bees in extracting tlu^ sweets from flowers, is no new 

 thing, but has cropped out now and then during the last 

 five hundred years, producing as much consternation among 

 the ignorant as the sight of a comet or an eclipse of the 

 gun. And, not unfi-equently, has this um-easonable preju- 

 dice been so rabid and wide-spread in its demonstrations as 

 to constrain the almost total abandonment of bee culture 

 where fruit raising bore sway. Nor has this prejudice died 

 out with the centuries, but is, to-day, entertained by large 

 numbers in our very midst, and we are scarcely surprised 



