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ON ARSENICAL SPRAYING OF FRUIT TREES WHILE IN BLOSSOM. 
By J. A. LINTNER, Albany, N. Y. 
[ Read, in the absence of the author, by J. B. Smith. ] 
The long-mooted question, Are honey bees poisoned by arsenical 
spraying? is still an unsettled one. There are those who claim that 
a great mortality among bees is the result of their visiting blossoms 
that have been sprayed with Paris green, while others hold that the 
mortality so frequently observed at this time is ascribable to other 
causes, and that the arsenic would not reach the nectar of blossoms, 
and, being an insoluble substance, could not affect the bees or be com- 
municated to the honey. This latter view has been entertained by 
some of our best botanists. The pollen, however, might contain arsenic 
and thus become poisonous, not only to the bees visiting the blos- 
soms, but also to the nearly-matured, thyme-fed larvae to whom it 
might be conveyed. 
In behalf of a committee appointed by the Association of Economie 
Entomologists to investigate the matter, Prof. F. M. Webster, of the 
Agricultural Experiment Station of Ohio, chairman of the committee, 
has recently reported progress in the investigations undertaken, to the 
following effect: He had experimented with a hive of bees placed 
underneath a sprayed plum tree wholly inclosed with a fine netting. 
Within two days thereafter a large number of dead bees were taken 
up from the cloth with which the ground had been covered. Without 
much doubt, most of these had been killed in their efforts to escape 
from their confinement. Examination of the bodies of the dead insects 
before washing and after they had been washed to remove any arsenic 
that had been attached to their surface from contact with the sprayed 
blossoms, gave to the examining chemist the presence of arsenic. In 
another experiment made, hives of bees were placed under sprayed 
trees, but without any inclosing net. These also gave dead bees with 
arsenic upon them, but in much smaller number.* The experiments 
were not deemed conclusive by Prof. Webster, and it is intended to 
continue them another year. 
That the bodies of crushed bees that had visited blossoms sprayed 
with arsenic should disclose to chemical tests the presence of arsenic 
is not at all strange. Even an ammoniacal bath could not have 
removed every trace of arsenic from the surface of their bodies. 
*It is possible that these bees may have been caught and killed by some of the 
predaceous insects which are known to lie in wait among or near blossoms, whence 
they suddenly seize the bees and suck out their juices, such as the bee-slayer, 
Phymata erosa, and several of the ‘‘robber flies” or Asilidae, of which Prof. A. J. 
Cock records six species having this habit. 
