Insect and Fungous Enemies of the Grape. 18 
been heavily manured. An excessive quantity of humus in the soil 
is thought greatly to favor the insect. 
CONTROL. 
The use of poison sprays on ripening fruit is impracticable and 
other methods must be employed. Bagging the fruit when it begins 
to color and allowing the bags to remain in position on the bunches 
until gathered has been employed with much success and is worth 
while in localities where damage is to be expected more or less each 
year. Considerable benefit follows systematic hand picking of beetles 
or knocking them from the vines into a pail of water bearing a film of 
kerosene. This work is best done in the morning, when the insects 
are more sluggish than during the heat of the day. Whenever prac- 
ticable, piles of compost and unusual quantities of humus on the soil 
should not be allowed in the neighborhood of vineyards. 
BEES. 
Frequent complaint is received from vineyardists of the destruction 
of the fruit by bees, and numerous actions in court have been taken 
against owners of colonies of bees to recover for loss of fruit supposed 
to have been destroyed by these insects. 
Experiments by entomologists and others have proved conclusively 
that honeybees can not break the skin of sound grapes with their 
mouthparts. Bees confined with bunches of sound grapes will die of 
starvation. Where the skin of the grape has been broken, however, 
as by other insects or fungous diseases, bees attack the berries at the 
injured places and may quickly reduce the fruit to a worthless con- 
dition. Injury by bees is best avoided by protection of the fruit 
from insects and diseases which interfere with its soundness. In the 
absence of spraying, fruit in danger of attack by bees can be pro- 
tected by bagging the bunches after the fruit is well set, or shortly 
before ripening begins. 
INSECTS INJURING THE FOLIAGE AND BUDS. 
THE GRAPE LEAFHOPPER.’ 
Throughout the United States and Canada wherever the grape is 
grown, the grape leafhopper will almost invariably be found in 
greater or less numbers infesting the lower surface of the leaf, where 
it feeds and breeds, increasing in numbers as the season progresses 
until by late summer and fall the vines are often literally swarming 
with it. Over its extended range the insect every year may be quite 
destructive in one or more localities, or it is likely to become so at 
any time. The grape leafhopper is an insidious pest usually not 
6 Typhlocyba comes Say. 
