CHAPTER XV 



BEES AND FRUIT-GROWING 



"All the forms resemble, yet none is the same as another; 

 Thus the whole of the throng points at a deep hidden law." 



— Goethe. 



WHILE there are many flowers with strangely bizarre 

 and grotesque shapes, which serve as hostelries for 

 bees and other insects, the majority of blossoms are 

 perfectly regular in form, either rotate or wheel-shaped, cup- 

 like or tubular. Such are the buttercup, fivefinger, straw- 

 berry, pear, apple, plum, blackberry, caraway, carrot, blue- 

 berry, goldenrod, daisy, and aster. The nectar is exposed in 

 many species to every passer-by, and attracts a great horde of 

 miscellaneous insects. Go into an orchard of Japanese plums 

 in early spring, and so abundant are the blossoms that they 

 fairly wreathe the limbs; Avhile the air is filled with a cloud of 

 wild bees and flies. On the inflorescence of several species of 

 the carrot family {UmhelUferoe) more than 200 visitors have 

 been collected; while the goldenrods are likewise great favor- 

 ites of the insect world. 



In Virginia the Ceanothus, or New Jersey tea, is in June, 

 says Banks, the most attractive enchanter of insect life. Its 

 fragrance calls and calls till around the heads of white blossoms 

 there is an encircling halo of bees, flies, and beetles, which fol- 

 low the enthralling odor until they rest on that bed of white. 

 To stand 'neath the broiling sun and watch the mazy world 

 of restless insect life, and to listen to the hum of a hundred 

 tiny wings mingled with the sharper buzz of larger species are 



261 



