THE LEMON LEAF AND PEEL SCALE. 89 



are facts ascertained by careful observation. Bee- 

 keepers claim that they know of actual instances, when 

 bee-hives have been located near orchards which have 

 been sprayed during the time the trees were in flower, 

 and that the bees have been found poisoned. A writer 

 in a late number of the American Bee Journal claimed 

 that the Paris green could be plainly seen in the bees' 

 bodies. This last statement, however, I think must 

 surely have been an exaggeration, although it is probably 

 the case that they may have been poisoned either by the 

 nectar or by drinking the water from the sprayed leaves. 

 It was also claimed that the honey stored away in the 

 comb was poisonous ; but this last statement will require 

 far more proof than has yet been brought forward. 

 Honey, as it occurs in the comb, is an altogether different 

 thing from the nectar of flowers. Before it becomes 

 honey it has to be partly digested by bees, and is not 

 honey at all when in the flowers. The bees suck up the 

 nectar and elaborate it into honey. I am under the 

 impression that before they could turn poisoned nectar 

 into honey the}^ would be killed by the poison. Another 

 safeguard is this : At the time fruit-trees are in flower, 

 although the trees might be poisoned, if some careless 

 fruit-grower were to spray at that time, it would be very 

 unlikely that poison would get into the honey we eat. 

 The honey stored away in the honey-comb is only the 

 surplus. At the time when spraying is done, early in 

 the season, bee-keepers tell me that the bees use the 

 honey they collect then almost entirely as food for their 

 brood, and the honey we steal from them afterwards is 

 only the food which they have laid up for themselves for 

 use during the winter ; or, in other words, there is no 

 surplus honey, apiarists say, at the time of the year when 

 fruit trees are in flower. I believe that bees have been 

 found, and Professor Cook, of Michigan, a high authority 

 on bees, states that larvae have been found poisoned 

 through partaking of this poisonous food. This is the 

 whole thing, and the question came up for discussion 

 before a committee of the Ontario Legislature, when I 



