FKriT-HLOSSOMS. 



224 



FliriT-r.LOSSOMS. 



APPLE-BLOSSOMS. 



bloom, is that a good deal of tlie brood dies, 

 until the bee-keeper begins to wonder wheth- 

 er his bees have foul brood, black brood, or 

 pickled brood— unless the truth dawns upon 

 him that they have been carrying in poison- 

 ous liquids from the trees that have just been 

 sprayed. Experiment stations all over the 

 United States have shown that it is quite 

 useless— indeed, often decidedly hai-mful to 

 the young fruit — to spray during the time i 

 the trees are in full bloom ; and they have j 

 shown over and over again that just as good 

 and better results can be secured by spray- 

 ing both before and after blooming, when 

 there is no danger of bees visiting the trees 

 in quest of pollen and nectar. Some experi- 

 ments that were conducted at the Cornell 

 and Geneva experiment stations, New ^ ork, 

 are particularly conclusive in sliowing that 



to spray in full bloom is decidedly injuri- 

 ous to the blossoms themselves, to say noth- 

 ing about the great damage done to the bee- 

 keeper. The i)oison as ordinarily used is 

 very harmful to the growth and develop- 

 ment of the pollen. Again, the delicate or- 

 gans of the flowers (stamens and pistils) are 

 either killed or injured. Some of the p jllen 

 in the experiments above mentioned was ta- 

 ken into the laboratory and mixed with a 

 thin syrup of about the consistency of raw 

 nectar, and to this was then added a quan- 

 tity of the spraying-liquid of the strength 

 that is ordinarily used on fruit-trees. In 

 every case it was found the pollen failed to 

 develop. In short, those in charge of these 

 experiments gave any amount of proof to the 

 effect that, irrespective of any interests of 

 the l)ee-keeper, the fruit-grower himself 



