456 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Fruit growers of the present have awakened to the fact that the 

 honey bee is their best friend, and that bees and fruit growing must 

 be closely combined. So it is all along the line of this immense 

 field of labor, depending upon the honey bees principally for suc- 

 cessful returns. Who would not be a friend to the honey bee, one 

 of nature's gifts to man? That there are not enough bees to 

 thoroughly supply this want there is little doubt; many neighbor- 

 hoods have but a few colonies of bees. In support of this I would 

 refer you to the state of California, which is the most extensive bee- 

 keeping state in the Union, and also the same in the production of 

 fruit. — National Rural. 



The failure of orchards to yield satisfactory crops from year to 

 year after reaching the normal bearing age is of frequent occur- 

 rence, and although adequate explanations can often be given for 

 such failure yet the reasons are sometimes very obscure. In the 

 course of other investigations the writer has demonstrated that 

 cross-pollination is an important factor in the production of pome 

 fruits. 



One of the ways by which the benefits of crossing are insured 

 to plants is through their sterility to their own pollen. Some fifty 

 or more species of plants are already known to be more or less 

 completely fruitless when only pollen from the same plant is applied 

 to their flowers, although the same plants mature fruits and seeds 

 when pollen from another plant is used. 



The nectar in pear blossoms is secreted copiously in the disk, 

 often filling the cup with a large drop, and serves to attract bees 

 and other insects, as does also the pollen. The white, showy petals 

 are a guide to the insects, and as the flowers grow in clusters and 

 the clusters are numerous, a tree in full bloom attracts insects from 

 long distances. When a bee alights on the flower, the stigma 

 brushes from its hairy coat some of the pollen which adhered to it 

 in previous visits to other trees, and if these trees were of a different 

 variety the flowers are thus cross-pollinated. The pistils mature 

 two or three days before the stamens of the same flower, and the 

 fully expanded stigma often protrudes through the petals before 

 they are open, thus being pollinated from some earlier opening 

 flower before the pollen of its own flower is ready — another means 

 by which cross-pollination takes place. 



Among the sorts of pears which were found to be more or less 

 completely self-sterile are the Anjou, Bartlett, Clairgeau, Clapp's 

 Favorite, Easter, Howell, Lawrence, Louise Bonne de Jersey, 

 Sheldon, Souvenir de Congress, Superfin and Winter Nelis. Many 



