ILLINOIS STATE BEE-KEEPERS' ASSOCIATION 



59 



are produced on cranberry vines, it "was 

 also established that bees maintaianed 

 purposely for their service in pollination 

 were an insurance to cranberry growers, 

 who are now maintaining apiaries in pro- 

 portion to the area under cultivation. It 

 cannot definitely be stated how many 

 colonies are necessary to a certain area; 

 this will depend upon conditions. It may 

 be suggested, however, that one colony 

 of bees to the acre of a bog is none too 

 many. 



In Cucumber Growing. 

 The cucumber has been mentioned. In 

 Massachusetts, especially in recent years, 

 cucumber growing under glass has de- 

 veloped. Originally the growers "ferti- 

 lized the plants" by hand, a most labor- 

 ious process. Bees were later introduced 

 and found to be indispensable, especially 

 in the larger commercial houses. One 

 grower, for instance, has forty acres 

 under glass. Taking the industry in 

 Massachusetts as a whole, it requires be- 

 tween two and three thousand colonies of 

 be'es annually to serve in the cucumber 

 greenhouses. These colonies are largely 

 reduced by the extremely unfavorable 

 conditions of greenhouse life, so that 

 cucumber-growing-under-glass demands 

 that the \)ee-keepers raise bees purposely 

 for greenhouses. The larger commercial 

 cucumber growers, too, have united in 

 certain localities and maintain a circuit 

 bee-keeper whose duty it is to care for 

 the bees of the greenhouses. 



In Various Fruit Orchards. 



It might be well to take up some of 

 the other horticultural pursuits and show 

 how bees are utilized in these, yet a gen- 

 eral statement may serve. Fruit or- 

 chards, that is the orchards of larger 

 fields, are much the same the country 

 over. Within recent years incorporated 

 or large fruit-growing companies have 

 developed. "With these has come more 

 keen competition. As a natural conse- 

 quence, in order to avoid the failure or 

 partial failure of a crop, apiaries have 

 been maintained for the orchards and 

 within the last two or three years apple 

 growers, particularly m the west, have 

 definitely decided to maintain bees essen- 

 tially for fruit setting, disregarding the 

 honey production factor. In connection 

 with the apple industry of the west I 

 shall show you in the slides an almond 

 orchard in California where bees are 

 maintained purposely to set the almonds; 

 so with the pears and lesser fruits. 

 Peaches, however, are apparently not 

 fully dependent upon bee service. 



"With this general survey of the situa- 



tion I wish now to turn to a more partic- 

 ular examination of the requirement of 

 bees for horticultural service. 



Failure Versus Success. 



The reason for the failure in an ap- 

 parently promising crop of apples, for 

 instance, has not always been correctly 

 interpreted. Moreover, I shall not main- 

 tain that the interpretation which I am 

 about to explain w-ill meet every case, 

 yet I believe that you will agree with me 

 that it is exceedingly important and 

 heretofore an unrecognized factor. In 

 order to give you a satisfactory explana- 

 tion, however, it will be necessary for me 

 to digress. 



In nature, especially wild nature, it is 

 a well known fact that prevalence of life, 

 be it plant or animal, is subject to fluc- 

 tuation due to favorable or unfavorable 

 environmental conditions. "When favored, 

 a plant or animal increases in numbers. 

 Plagues, fires, adverse climatic conditions, 

 and hosts of other unfavorable circum- 

 stances will cause a species to decrease 

 in numbers. Observations on this point 

 are numerous and to make my conten- 

 tion clear it is but necessary to mention 

 one or two illustrations. For instance, 

 in a given locality there may be a pest of 

 mosquitoes or hous^-flies this year; next 

 year, in the same Ideality, the mosquitoes 

 or the flies may \ become scarce. The 

 same is true of the .game birds, fish, in- 

 sect pests of all kinds, weeds, and to a 

 certain extent of human beings. They 

 are plentiful or scarce from year to year 

 according to the season or the environ- 

 ment. It may therefore be expressed as 

 fundamental biological law which is 

 graphically represented in Fig. . 



(Dr. Gates inserted many slides to il- 

 lustrate his lecture — too numerous for us 

 to insert.) 



This figure portrays prevalence and 

 scarcity of any species through any 

 period or, for instance, the fluctuation of 

 honey bees in an orchard through any 

 period. For ease in speaking of this con- 

 dition it may be said that bees have their 

 periods of "ups and downs." Years when 

 they are favored their numbers rise to 

 the crest of prosperity and prevalence, 

 (lower curve), and when unfavorable 

 conditions set in. as for instance when 

 bee diseases are in a locality, their 

 numbers become greatly reduced. Hard 

 winters, scarcity of food, and shifting of 

 population may also depreciate the honey 

 bees of a locality, when the curve would 

 show a depression. Thus within the short 

 space of a year the number of bees in a 



