64 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Feb. 



among the roses? Many seedlings of this sample 

 have ordinary colored seed instead of white ones. 

 Will my cho?cn plant be correct on this point? 

 Seeds ripened, and they were white — good enough 

 for one year. I have a fine pot of plants of the 

 fourth generation; hut, as maybe imagined, could 

 not got them large enough to bloom this year. I 

 wished also to propagate from another one of the 

 [our white seedlings, a very rank one with large 

 heads and large Howcr-tuhes. It looked, in fact, as 

 if sometime in past ages there had been an inter- 

 marriage with Trifolium rcjM^ns, and this plant was 

 just faintly remembering it. 



No..') had another surprise in store for me. The 

 original plant was chosen for its elongated head, 

 slightly resombllng the Italian clover; and the tubes 

 at the top of the head would bo only half grown 

 when those at the base were in full bloom. Ic oc- 

 curred to me at the time, that a slight tendency to 

 change to a raceme probably caused this unusual in- 

 florescence; but I did not think that so radical a 

 change cnuld be pushed to any great length in one 

 man's lifetime. This season, No. 5 has convinced 

 me that racemes of flowers, as unmistakable as those 

 of the melilotus, can be developed on the common 

 clover. What's the use? say you. Let me just tell 

 j'ou. A clover-head is a tloral fortification, designed 

 to protect the drops of honey from borers and nib- 

 blers. Tho massing of the tubes in a head is one 

 element of defense; and the length of the tubes is 

 another. The collar in which Sir Clover's neckless 

 head sits, like a boy's head driven down into his 

 shoulders, completes the defense. Changing to a 

 raceme is abandoning the fortification plan. The 

 plan once abandoned, all three of the defensive 

 schemes are likely to subside together. That is, 

 develop a clover with racemes instead of heads, and 

 the tubes will shorten down without any special ef- 

 fort to make them do so. The flowers which sur- 

 prised me this season were not only arranged in an 

 elongated head as before, but there was a neck 

 about an inch long between the collar and the head; 

 and on this one inch were three or four solitary hairs, 

 precisely as if an inch from a raceme had been put 

 under the head. With the editor's permission I will 

 give a diagram. 



hasty's development of the clovers. 

 In Fig. 3, a a represent the stems of the small pair 

 of leaves which support the collar; h is the unusual 

 neck, or extension of rachis; and c c c the solitary 

 flowers, but none were produced. There were but 

 two heads of this character; and the flowers which 

 were not solitary, few of them had seed; and of the 

 few seed, only one came up. Other heads on the 

 same plant, which were normal except at the tip. 



gave plenty of seed. I have constituted this sport a 

 new sample as No. 11. 



As to Nos. ti and 7, 1 am delayed one year. Either 

 I gathered no seed from them last season, or the 

 seed was lost. I have some lute-sown plants, of this 

 year's seed, to go on with next year. 



Of No. 8 and No. 10, several rows of nice seedlings 

 were raised. They bloomed freely during the latter 

 part of the summer, but — but — I shall have to wait 

 till they bloom again next summer ere I tell you 

 what progress they made. It is a big job to compare 

 carefully several hundred seedlings, and decide 

 which are the best ones; and poor I didn't get the 

 time. The regular routine work with a sample, you 

 understand, is to raise a great lot of plants; and 

 then when they bloom, to examine, condemn, and 

 pull up all but one. 



No. 9, if you chance to remember, is the one I have 

 previously mentioned as likely to be the first to yield 

 a satisfactory bee clover. This year it is jealous, or 

 something — determined that No. 4, that "t'other 

 dear charmer," shall not win me entirely away. In 

 the first place, it has produced some very marked 

 sports with yellow foliage, which I have adopted as 

 No. 13. It has also done what it never did before- 

 produced a seedling with flowers of the same beau- 

 tiful tint as the original plant. Then it threw in a 

 "tiger" by producing one nearly white, with just a 

 slight tinge of the original color. Both these seed- 

 lings are very short tubed. I think I shall insist on 

 the color in future; experience with No. 4 indicat- 

 ing that tube length can be shortened faster that 

 way than by planting seed from plants with reverted 

 colors. One of the wisest things I got off in my first 

 clover article (Gleanings, Aug.,18T9) was, " If a hab- 

 it of sporting and variation can be set up, the varia- 

 tions we desire will be pretty sure to come, sooner 

 or later." It is this consideration that makes me val- 

 ue my yellow-leaved sample No. 13. Not that yellow 

 leaves themselves are any improvement; but seeds 

 of such a sport are likely to be more variable than 

 others; and the next curious sport that turns up 

 may be something valuable. E. E. Hasty. 



Richards, Lucas Co., O. , Jan., 1883. 



POIiliEN A NECESSITY FOR BROOD- 

 REARING. 



M'UCH is being said of late in regard to pollen 

 being detrimental for wintering bees; and 



' out of this there seems to have grown the 



idea that pollen, although detrimental for winter- 

 ing, is an absolute necessity for brood-rearing. 

 Hence we find those words: "We are interested 

 about pollen, because bees can not rear brood with- 

 out either it or some substitute for it;" also, " They 

 (the bees) had no pollen, and of course no brood- 

 rearing could go on without it," and many other 

 similar expressions. I have been waiting for some 

 time to see if these statements would not call out 

 something in Gleanings from the other side of the 

 question; but as nobody seems to disagree, I hope I 

 shall be excused for bringing forth a little proof, go- 

 ing to show that a mistake has been made. First, 

 I will give my own experiments, and then the state- 

 ments of others to substantiate the same thing. 



Quite late in the fall of 1873 I ascertained that a 

 farmer, living a mile or more from me, had two 

 (third) swarms of bees which he was going to brim- 

 stone the next day. I went to see him, and ascer- 



