BEES AND HORTICULTURE. 459 



fruit dropped at the stoning period. Insects, and especially bees, 

 which have nectar secreting instinct as a motive for labor or bloom, 

 are an aid to pollination, for which nature seems to have provided 

 no adequate substitute. Their office is to distribute pollen from 

 flower to flower and from tree to tree. Much of the complaint 

 about fruit falling would cease if horticulturists kept bees in the 

 orchard. For the protection of bees the horticulturist should never 

 spray while the trees are in bloom. He owes that much to these 

 valuable assistants in his work. — Green's Fruit Grower, 



In "Bienen-Vater" are given the results of experiments in which 

 netting was put over branches of trees at the time of blooming. 

 The time of blooming on such covered limbs was prolonged as if 

 the blossoms were waiting for the bees to fertilize them. On apple 

 trees the time of such blossoms was prolonged one to three days 

 more than the time of blossoms uncovered. Pear blossoms were 

 prolonged four to five days; plum, four to seven days. No fruit set 

 on the covered apple branches. Some fruit set on the other trees, 

 most of it falling prematurely. — American Bee Journal. 



The director of the School of Horticulture at Villorde, France, 

 placed a colony of bees at the disposal of his peach trees, under 

 glass, at the time of blooming in February. The crop, previously 

 scant, was now unreasonably heavy. — La Progress Apicole. 

 (Gleanings.) 



Four years ago, when I rented one of the orchards which X am 

 now running, the owners had about a dozen swarms of bees in box 

 hives, and took no care of them except to hive the swarms in more 

 box hives. He managed to keep about the same number of 

 colonies, as the bee moth, which is very bad here, cleaned out about 

 as many colonies as he managed to hive every year. He had a 

 large cherry orchard, and told me that for eight years he did not get 

 a cherry. He was about to dig up the trees when some one advised 

 him to try bees, which he did. The result was that for three or 

 four years after he got the bees he sold his cherry crop in Chicago 

 and New York for about $4,000.00. His idea in keeping bees was 

 only to fertilize the fruit bloom. 



I shall increase to one hundred stocks, as I have 140 acres of 

 trees for them to work on. — F. L. Morrill, of California, in "Glean- 

 ings," June I, 1899. 



In seven localities in Austria last year, experiments on the 

 fertilizing of fruit blossoms were conducted, according to a con- 

 certed plan, on a variety of trees and shrubs, choosing those that 



