122 Forty-ninth Report on the State Museum 



The Apple-tree Case-bearer {Coleophora malivorella, Riley) emerges 

 from its peculiar pistol-shaped case in which it has passed the winter, to 

 eat the buds as soon as they begin to swell, and afterward to skeletonize 

 the leaves. 



The Plum Curculio ( Conotrachelus nenuphar^ Herbst) enters upon the 

 scene at least two weeks before its first crescent cuts are made in the 

 fruit, ready and free to devote all its energies to obtaining the supply of 

 food needed for the development of its eggs and for the labors attending 

 its complicated and painstaking method of oviposition. 



Seventeen species of insects are named above, each one of which is 

 feeding voraciously during the blossoming of our fruit trees. Possibly as 

 many more could be added to the list, all of which could best be destroyed 

 by arsenical spraying. 



Respective Interests of the Apiarist and Fruit-Grower. 



It is therefore respectfully submitted whether there should be the in- 

 termission of spraying as proposed, urged, and sought to be made com- 

 pulsory through legislation, until it shall appear beyond all controversy 

 that the interests of the apiarist and the fruit-grower, each carefully con- 

 sidered and perhaps weighed one against the other, really demand it. 



Note. — Since the preparation of the above paper, Prof Webster, as 

 the result of later and carefully conducted experiments,* has been able to 

 adduce positive proof that honey bees are injured by feeding on blossoms 

 that have been sprayed with the arsenites. In the first experiment, a 

 Lombard plum tree in full bloom was sprayed April 29, 1892, with 

 Paris green and water (four ounces to fifty gallons) until wet thoroughly 

 without dripping. The tree was covered down to the lower branches 

 with thin brown sheeting, the lower portion being inclosed with mosquito 

 netting, and the ground covered with the same material. The hive of 

 bees, which had been kept for the preceding two weeks, was placed 

 under the tree within the coverings in the evening after the spraying. 

 The following afternoon there was a large number of dead and dying 

 bees on the cloth when the cover was removed, and several hundred 

 bees were gathered from the cloth on the ground. These dead bees 

 were tested for arsenic in several lots: First, as tliey were; second, after 

 a thorough washing to remove arsenic which might have become attached 

 to their bodies ; third, after washing as before, the abdomens only ; fourth, 

 the remainder of the bodies less the wings; fifth, the rest of the dead 

 bees were thrown out, exposed to a severe thunder shower, agam col- 



* Spraying with Arsenites vs. Bees. Bull. 6S Ohio Agr. ExJ>t. Stat., 1896, pp. 48-53. 



