194 EXPERIMENTAL FARMS 
2-3 EDWARD VII. A. 1903 
they were too weak to stand the process of extracting, and they would be too weak to 
support heavy swarms or stand shipping. The results of these experiments show that it 
is better in all cases to use full sheets of foundation, both in the sections of the supers 
and in the frames of the brood chamber. 
EXPERIMENTS TO TEST WHETHER BEES INJURE SounD FRuit. 
During the summer of 1901 when there was no surplus honey to be gathered from 
plants outside, experiments were made with ripe fruit of four different kinds, peaches, 
pears, plums, and grapes, exposed in different places in or near the Experimental Farm 
apiary, where it was easily accessible to the bees. : 
This experiment has been repeated during the season of 1902, with the addition of 
strawberries and raspberries. All the fruit was placed in the same position as in 1901, 
viz: (a) in the hives, (6) on trees and (c) in a work shop adjoining the house apiary. 
Peaches, pears, plums and grapes.—The fruit was exposed in three different con- 
ditions: (1.) Whole, without any treatment; (2.) Whole, after having been dipped in 
honey; (3.) Punctured in several places with the blade of a penknife. 
Four colonies were selected for this experiment, all of about equal strength. Each 
of these colonies was in a hive upon which was placed a super divided in the middle by 
a partition. From two of the hives the honey had all been removed, in the two remain- 
ing hives five frames were left, each having considerable brood, with honey around it. 
In each one of the four hives, the whole specimens of fruit not dipped in honey were 
hung within three empty frames tied together as a rack; the whole specimens of fruit 
dipped in honey were placed in one compartment of the super and the punctured spe- 
cimens were placed in the other. 
A. The bees began to work at once both upon the dipped and the punctured fruit ; 
the former was cleaned thoroughly of honey during the first night ; upon the punctured 
fruit the bees clustered thickly, sucking the juice through the punctures as long as they 
could obtain any liquid. 
At the end of six days all the fruit was carefully examined. The sound fruit was 
still uninjured in any way; the dipped fruit was in a like condition, quite sound; but 
every vestige of the honey had disappeared ; the punctured fruit was badly mutilated 
and worthless; beneath each puncture was a cavity, and in many instances decay had 
set in. 
The experiment was continued the following week ; the undipped sound fruit was 
left in the brood chamber, the dipped fruit was given a new coating of honey and 
replaced in the super, and a fresh supply of punctured fruit was substituted for that 
which had been destroyed. ; 
At the end of the second week both the undipped and the dipped specimens of 
fruit that were sound at the end of the first week, as well as the punctured specimens, 
were considerably decayed and, where there were any openings in the skin, showed signs 
of having been worked on, though to no very great extent. 
For the third week fresh samples of fruit of all the above kinds were used ; the 
result was very similar to that of the first week and, as it was later in the season, some 
of the fruit that had been put in sound had begun to decay. 
After the third week the bees in the two hives which had been deprived of all 
their honey, appeared to be very sluggish, and there were many dead bees about the 
hives, the weather being cool and damp was very much against these colonies. They: 
had lived for the first three weeks on the punctured fruit and on the honey of the fruit 
which had been dipped, as there were at that season few plants in flower from which 
they could gather nectar ; these bees had therefore died of starvation, notwithstanding 
the proximity of the ripe juicy fruit. This supply of food which they were urgently in 
need of, was only separated from them by the thin skin of the fruit, which, however, 
this evidence seems to prove they could not puncture, as they did not do so. 
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