PROCEEDINGS OF THE WINTER MEETING. 13 



THE RELATION OF BEES TO HORTICULTURE— BENEFITS AND INJURIES. 

 W. Z. HUTCHINSON, KOGERSVILLE, MICHIGAN. 



That bees are an important factor in the economy of nature has been proved 

 beyond a doubt. Only a few days ago I came across the following in the Ameri- 

 can Bee Journal: " Most of the readers of the Journal are aware that in 

 England melons, cucumbers, pumpkins, and squashes cannot be raised in the 

 open air; they are all raised in green-houses and hot-bed frames, and many 

 hours have I worked in the garden at home in England with a fine, long cam- 

 el's hair brush, conveying the pollen from blossom to blossom where the bees 

 could not get to do the work ; and even now, in this climate, if we do not 

 have good weather for the bees to work on the fruit bloom, and especially on 

 red clover saved for seed, we get but a poor crop. Last year I had a good 

 crop of mammoth clover seed, while a few miles from here there was none, 

 and I think I owe it to my colonies of Italian bees, for they worked on it first- 

 rate. 



" W. Addenbrooke." 



A few weeks ago I heard two old farmers discussing bees and buckwheat.. 

 " I tell you," said one, "buckwheat is a good thing for bees." "Yes," replied 

 the other, "but the bees are not a very good thing for the buckwheat." "No, 

 I suppose not," said farmer number one. And thus the conversation ran on,, 

 until I ventured to ask Mr. Farmer how he knew that buckwheat was injured 

 by the bees. " Why, they take something from it, don't they? If they do 

 this, it injures it. How can it be otherwise?" replied my farmer friend. I 

 then explained that I was a bee-keeper, and also a raiser of buckwheat ; that 

 my buckwheat, which was at times fairly "swarming " with bees, yielded fully 

 as well, if not better, than buckwheat that was far removed from the busy 

 workers. I explained now necessary were the bees for the fertilization of blos- 

 soms; that if the blossoms were covered with muslin, so that the bees had no 

 access to them, they produced no fruit. 



My opponent contended that it might not be lack of visits from the bees that 

 made the covered blossoms unfertile, but lack of heat from the sun's rays, as 

 the result of being covered. I then cited to him the experiments of Prof. 

 Lazenby, of Ohio, in covering strawberries with boxes, and fertilizing one 

 variety with the pollen from another. Specimens that were left unfertilized 

 produced no fruit; those that were fertilized did. I also told that oft-re- 

 peated story of how the fruit growers of a certain town in Massachusetts, 

 years ago, compelled the bee-keepers in that vicinity to move their bees out of 

 town. The bees injured the fruit, so said the fruit growers. In a few years 

 they were persuading the bee-keepers to bring back their bees, as the crops of 

 fruit had been exceptionally light since the removal of the bees. The bees 

 were brought back, and with them came abundant crops. I told him that crops 

 of red clover seed could not be raised in Australia until bumble bees were 

 imported to fertilize the blossoms. I then waxed elocpient, and declared that 

 the beautiful colors were not given flowers simply to please the human eye, 

 the grateful fragrance to regale the human olfactories, nor did the nectar flow 

 simply that it might be gathered up and used to tickle human palates; these 

 things were the blossom's advertisement which attracts to it the honey- 

 loving bee, which came, bringing with it the fertilizing pollen from distant 



