Report of Apiary Inspector. 63 



easily be kept, which would give over ten million dollars auimally to 

 the wealth of the State. Twenty times this amount would be a reason- 

 able possibility. In many parts of the State are to be found large 

 areas of pasture lands covered with white and alsike clover, while in 

 other parts are to be found the broad acres of Spanish needle and hearts- 

 ease where but a few bees are to be found, and tons of honey are going 

 to waste annually for the want of bees to gather it. 



Other parts of the country not so well supplied with nectar-bearing 

 plants, can be improved by the planting of honey producing trees and 

 plants that are valuable in other ways besides honey production. Among 

 those worthy of mention in this connection are the fruit trees and berry 

 plants the clovers, especially the white, the alsike and mellilotus or 

 sweet clover. The latter has until recently been considered a worth- 

 less weed, but now it is proving itself to be a soil builder. Buckwheat 

 is also worthy of mention here. ^Melons and cucumbers, where grown 

 commercially, have been known to yield handsome crops of honey. The 

 same can be said of lima beans and many other crops, when grown in 

 large quantities. 



While thus planning for larger crops of honey, and the future 

 welfare of the honey bee, we should ever remember that in the poUeniza- 

 tion of the bloom the bee is rendering a service that is the full equivalent 

 to the amount of toll she exacts from the flower for performing this 

 service. We do not fully appreciate the bee's good work, for the reason 

 that we are unable to count its value in dollars and cents. 



The influence of bees in the production of seed and fruit is a subject 

 that brings bee culture into a very close relationship with practical and 

 scientific agriculture and horticulture. 



A closer study of the bees and flowers, and their great mutual 

 benefit plan, "give and receive," is commendable to all, and especially 

 to teachers of our public schools, for in the study of their life and habits, 

 their relationship and mutual dependence, the one upon the other, we 

 find a most beautiful and useful lesson in the harmony nature. Here 

 we find the one getting its food supply from the other, out of a product 

 — honey and pollen — that would otherwise be w^asted; and while so 

 doing is unwittingly carrying the pollen grains from one flower to 

 another, thus performing a service which means the perpetuation of the 

 species in the other. In the inauguration of this great plan. Nature 

 seemed to forsee the ill effects of a perpetual self-fertilization, and made 

 many provisions to prevent the same. Consequently we find in most 

 plants a prepotency to foreign pollen; in others the flowers are sterile 

 to their own pollen ; in others the essential organs come to maturity at 



