ILLJNOIS STATE BEE-KEEPERS' ASSOCIATION 



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BEE-KEEPING FOR THE FRUIT GROWER. 



^ E. J. BAXTER, NAUVOO. 



My subject for today is "Bee-keep- 

 ing for the Fruit Grower." Bee- 

 keeping is certainly a very interesting 

 as well as a very profitable pursuit 

 when rightly conducted, and as I- have 

 been both a bee-keeper and a fruit- 

 grower on rather a large scale for 

 more than forty years, and have made 

 good in both callings, if I may be per- 

 mitted to use the slang phrase, I can 

 speak to you with the fullest confi- 

 dence that what I tell you cannot be 

 successfully disputed. 



In the past there has been a great 

 deal of antagonism by the fruit growers 

 against the bee-keeper, on the suppo- 

 sition that bees damaged fruits, but, as 

 it has been definitely proven time and 

 again by some of our most careful 

 and renowned " experimenters that the 

 honey bee does not primarily damage 

 fruits of any kind, this antagonism is 

 dying out. On the contrary, how many 

 fruit growers are actually hiring bee- 

 keepers to conduct an apiary in or near 

 their orchards or fruit plantations, and 

 why this change in attitude, do you 

 ask? I will tell yoou. Simply because 

 it has been very clearly proven that 

 the honey bee, instead of being a foe 

 to the fruit grrower, is one of his very 

 best friends. "The world do move," 

 and we are learning more and more 

 every day. It has been claimed by 

 some scientists, for some time past, 

 and undisputively proven recently by 

 experiments, that the honey bee is one 

 of the chief agencies, if not the chief 

 agency, in the poUenation of our fruits 

 and field crops. One eminent scientist 

 says that there are about sixty species 

 of insects, more or less widely dis- 

 tributed throughout the United States, 

 that help to pollenize our fruits and 

 vegetables, but that the honey bee does 

 more toward that end than the fifty- 

 nine other species all put together. I 

 presume many of you have read of the 

 experiments conducted by the United 

 States Department of Agriculture 

 along these lines, in the State of Cali- 

 fornia some years ago, and how im- 

 possible it was to secure a good crop 

 of cherries in territory from which the 

 honey bee had been excluded, whereas 

 . before the exclusion of the honey bees 

 the cherry crops were always good. 



and when the honey bees were brought 

 back the cherry crops again became 

 good. 



You have also probably noted the 

 experiments conducted in the apple 

 orchards of Washington and Idaho to 

 determine as near as possible to what 

 extent the honey bee conduced to an 

 increase of crop of perfect fruit. It 

 was shown very clearly that, in the or- 

 chards where the* honey bees visited 

 the apple bloom very freely, not 

 only was the crop largely increased, 

 but the apples were much more 

 perfect, there being scarcely any 

 gnarled or knotty specimens. The re- 

 sult was that there suddenly sprang 

 up a great demand for honey bees in 

 the Yakima, Wenatchee and other 

 orchard districts of Washington. The 

 results of the experiments in Idaho 

 were identically the same as in Wash- 

 ington, I could add my own experi- 

 ence as to the great value of the honey 

 bee in the poUenation of my fruits. 

 They have added many hundreds of 

 dollars to the value of the crops I have 

 been enabled to harvest through their 

 help. And, my friends, this is not a 

 pipe dream of mine. It is the actual 

 fact, and has been noted not only by 

 myself, but by the whole community 

 in which I live. 



I believe that all are pretty well 

 agreed on the fact that the honey bee 

 is a great wealth producer to our com- 

 monwealth through the millions of 

 pounds of honey and beeswax that 

 they produce every year, which would 

 go to waste were it not for them. But, 

 in view of the facts demonstrated, in 

 the poUenation of our fruits and field 

 crops, by the honey bees, who can es- 

 timate the millions of dollars derived 

 annually from fruits and seeds that 

 are made possible through their 

 labors? Thip opens up a great field 

 for thought and research. 



Now, then, let us look at bee-keep- 

 ing from another viewpoint. Can bee- 

 keeping and fruit growing be combined 

 and pursued^ together so as not to con- 

 flict, one with the other, and can bee- 

 keeping carried on in this way be 

 made directly profi'table through the 

 honey and beeswax produced, without 

 lessening the profits from fruit grow- 



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