40 



flies or wasps, but most flowers store it in pits or tubes, only accessible 

 to long tongued insects such as higher bees and the indkistrious honey bee 

 which is far the most important fertilizer of plants and useful fruits. 

 Some plants indeed, such as the red clover and nasturtium have the hon- 

 ey at such a great disllance dow^n a narrow tuibe that only the extra 

 long-tongued bees, namely the bum.ble bees can reach it. 



The honey bees, the bumble bees and more solitary bees live through 

 the winter in the adult stage, and so are ready to work when the 

 fruit trees are in bloom and other insects are scarce. Their hairy bodies 

 and tongues are specially adapted to transferring pollen and they are 

 particularly effective as pollinators on account of the busy and methodi- 

 cal way they workj from blossom to blossom and from plant to plant. 



Darwin found that 20 h'eads of common white clover ( Trif olium 

 repens ) , covered with a net so that bees could not visit them, yielded! on- 

 ly one aborted seed, while 20 uncovered heads that were seen visited by 

 bees yielded 2290 seeds. An unprotected head of sweet clover ( Melilotus 

 officinalis) produced at least 30 times more seed than a protected one. 



It is well \know^n that the production of many kinds of fruit depends 

 largely on the pollination of the blossoms by bees. 



Hooper, a recent and careful investigator in England, has found that 

 honey bees and bumble bees are absolutely necessary for the production of 

 gooseberries and currants. They are also necessary for pears, apples, 

 cherries and plums, many varieties of which will not set fruit from the 

 same tree or variety. It is therefore advisable in planting to intermix 

 two or three varieties blooming at about the same time. 



Care should be taken in the choosing of the varieties planted to-gether, 

 as the pollen in a certain varietv often produces better results than that 

 of another variety. In long-continued fine weather bees will pollinate 

 blossoms at a distance of two or three miles from the hives, but in less 

 favorable and broken weather they do not go far afield when the flow- 

 ers may be waiting for their services. A great excess of bees is therefore 

 desirable and they should be kept near the orchard. The apple blossom 

 has five stigmas each of which must be separately dusted with pollen 

 for the production of a perfect apple. There is reason to believe that in 

 some parts of Canada bumble bees are less plentiful than they were. They 

 too should be encouraged as they work in less favorable weather tnan 

 honey bees. If one apple blo.ssom out of six sets, that would give a suffi- 

 cient crop in most cases. 



Raspberries and loganberries also need insects to pollinate them, and 

 here again honey bees and bumble bees are by far the most inportant 

 visitors. Hooper thinks, from observations made in 191T-1912 in 

 Kent and Devonshire, England, that when honey bees are in the district 

 roughly about 80 per cent of the pollination is done by them, 15 per cent 

 done by bumble bees and 5 per cent due to solitary bees, ants, beetles 

 and flies. These figures are probably not far wrong for Canada. 



The strawberry is pollinated by wind and can set fruit well almost 

 without insects. 



