"76 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



of flowers — a wonderful provision of the Creator — for by so doing 

 they are sure to carry the pollen just where it is wanted, without mix- 

 ing any other kind. This is evidence that they were designed by the 

 Creator for this especial work of fertilizing the flowers. 



Another fact about as wonderful is that the plants, precisely at 

 the time when they are in need of pollen, should hold out to the bees 

 their myriads of beautifully colored fairy cups, each containing a tempt- 

 ing morsel of richly perfumed nectar. This looks like a shrewdly 

 arranged advertisement on the part of the plants to swap honey to 

 the bees for pollen — written in three different languages, those best 

 understood by the bees, viz. beauty, fragrance and sweetness, appeal- 

 ing with success to their keen sense of sight, smell and taste. 



It is also a well-known fact that all our clovers ( which are our 

 best honey-yielding plants the world over) are almost completely 

 dependent on bees for their pollenation, and that the common red 

 clover, although it blooms at a time when the domestic hive bee is 

 very abundant, cannot be fertilized by it because the nectar cups of 

 the clover are too deep to be reached by its short proboscis, and there- 

 fore it has to depend on the bumble-bee for pollenation; but as these 

 bees do not winter over (except the queens ), and therefore do not 

 become numerous until late in the season, therefore the first crop of 

 red clover is very imperfectly pollenated and is seldom used for seed, 

 but by the time the second crop is in bloom bumble-bees are very 

 numerous, hence the second crop is well fertilized and is always pre- 

 ferred for seed. 



It is also a noteworthy fact, illustrating the importance of bees to 

 fruit-growing, that very early in the spring when most fruit flowers 

 open, the hive bee is comparatively very numerous, as most of the 

 workers of the previous autumn are wintered over, and thousands 

 more are hatched out from 30 to 60 days in advance of the earliest 

 flowers, while many other kinds of bees and honey-loving iusec's are 

 extremely scarce, as they have to be reared in the spring from eggs 

 that have been either wintered over or deposited in the spring. 



For these reasons, and many others too numerous to allude to in 

 this paper, it is not hard to understand and appreciate the importance 

 of so potent a factor as the bee in the economy of plant reproduction. 

 Other things being as they are, if it were not for the intervention of the 

 bee, very many of our fruit-bearing plants, vines, shrubs and trees 

 would be rendered worthless, or at best unprofitable, if, indeed, they 

 did not become altogether extinct, and horticulture would be shorn of 

 half its glory. 



