FIFTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART VIII. 



573 



Other plants of the same group are toadflax, thistle, lobelia, bindweed, 

 pumpkin, and bergamot or horsemint. Pumpkin was visited by honey 

 bees but comparatively seldom. Horsemint, also, numbered honey bees 

 and even some smaller bees among its visitors. The whole corolla is 

 covered with glands which exude an aromatic substance, and this may 

 be a means of attraction. There is a wild bee which sometimes bites 

 through the corolla tube, and steals the nectar, without giving the plant 

 anything in return. The honey bee is ready, when it can find such an 

 opening, to make use of the short cut to nectar that it affords. 



As a type of the second or medium-tube group, I have chosen that plant 

 which is rapidly coming to the front in the favor of beekeepers, the 

 white sweet clover. Possibly itg tube is a little shorter than the average 

 of this class. White clover might have been a bit more typical, but 

 for some reason white clover did not produce nectar this year. This 

 reason is, as yet," one of the unsolved problems of botany. 



Among the visitors of this flower easily first is the honey bee (a). Only 

 on a few unseasonable days was this bee surpassed in numbers by an- 

 other insect, and this is a large white-faced fiy (first insect of fly row in 

 figure) that is nearly always present on the flower. I must say that 

 whatever may be the honey yield of sweet clover, my studies this sum- 

 mer have given me a very high opinion of its power to attract bees. (Fig. 

 3) When white clover is left alone, when buckwheat ceases to attract, 

 when other recognized honey plants pass unnoticed, sweet clover is 

 veritably humming with bee life and activity. 



^Vild Parsnip (Partinaca sativa). Pollinated by flies and bees. Nectar 

 «iiallow. (Charlotte M. King.) 



