168 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



M arch 14, 1901. 



form. It is only from jealousy, coming from that innate 

 weakness common to all, causing- a restlessness to come 

 over others by seeing the bee-keeper prosperous, that such 

 demands are made of us bee-keepers, and to show any con- 

 cession on our.part at this point would be to " let down the 

 bars" for a still greater call upon us. 



No sooner did it go out by a gossip of our neighborhood, 

 that " Doolittle was making money out of his bees," than a 

 few about me began looking around, and when they saw 

 bees at work on the bloom in their orchards, meadows and 

 buckwheat fields, they began to reason that Doolittle was 

 getting rich from that which belonged to them, and from 

 this sprang the thought that the saccharine matter found 

 in the flowers was placed there for the development of the 

 fruit ; and as the bees took away this sweet as fast as it was 

 secreted by the flowers, an injury must result to the product 

 coming from these flowers and their fields, which injury 

 did much to enhance Doolittle's gains. 



Since being in the queen-business more largely than in 

 the honey-business, I have heard less of this than formerly ; 

 but from my own experience I doubt not that every pros- 

 perous bee-keeper has either heard something similar to 

 this, or, if he has not heard it. his neighbors have talkt it 

 when not heard by him. I have even been askt for ten 

 pounds of nice basswood comb honey as pay for what honey 

 the bees gathered from a ten-acre field of Canada thistles, 

 which the owner of the land had allowed to grow up thru 

 his shiftlessness, he arguing that a pound of honey from 

 an acre was a very light toll, indeed. When thus approacht, 

 I have always assumed the attitude of the injured or 

 grieved one, and demanded a cash return for the service ren- 

 dered the crop by the bees causing greater fruitage thru 

 their properly poUenizing the flowers workt upon, and have 

 always so presented my arguments that every party so 

 approaching me has gone away convinced that I was right in 

 claiming that better results always attended any crop which 

 was visited b)' the bees in the blossom form. 



I take a little difterent view of these matters than do 

 most other people, going back to the creation of all things 

 and telling ho%v all fruit or grain of any kind was an 

 entire failure till insects were created to visit the flowers 

 which secreted nectar, while those that did not secrete nec- 

 tar bore fruit as perfect then as to-day. Of course, thus 

 far, all js a matter of conjecture, but it serves the purpose 

 of getting the thoughts of the one talkt with from what he 

 considers a grievance, over to a line of thinking where he 

 is at least a little pliable toward the bee side of the matter. 

 From this I go on to explain how that the first object of 

 nectar in the flowers was not for the perfecting of fruit, or 

 to be used as a food or luxury for man, nor even to sustain 

 the life of the bees, but as a means to an end, and that this 

 end was that insects of all kinds might be drawn to the 

 flowers so secreting, that the fruit, or female blossoms of 

 plants which could not possibly be fertilized in any other 

 way, might be fertilized thru the agency of insects which 

 would be attracted to these flowers by the tempting and 

 attractive morsels of sweet they spread out before them as a 

 sumptuous feast, while honey as food for the bee and for 

 the use of man came in as a secondary matter or item. 



I then proceed to dwell on insects other than the bee, 

 and show that these out-number the bees by scores, as all 

 close observers well know, showing that to claim damage 

 of any one from these would be something not to be har- 

 bored for one moment. 



Having gotten the thought now fully on my side of the 

 matter, I next proceed to quote from Gregory's treatise on 

 squashes, where he says, " The primary reason why a 

 squash grows, is to protect and afford nutriment to 'the 

 seed"— the use of it as food being a secondary matter, and 

 thru this line of reasoning prove that the primary object of 

 the nectar placed in the blossoms of the squash was to 

 draw insects to the blossoms, as the female blossom is of 

 such shape, and being hid down in the leaves, that pollina- 

 tion could not be effected in any other way, and thus neither 

 seed, nutriment, nor anything of the kind could be 

 obtained, were it not for the insects which were attracted by 

 that little nectar which was placed in these for the sole and 

 only purpose that the seed to the squash might perfect. 



I then go on to give Gregory's experiments of covering 

 the female blossoms so no insects could visit them, and 

 without a single exception, every such covered squash-blos- 

 som was abortive. I also tell how bees were once banisht 

 from the town of Wenham, Mass., the result being that no 

 perfect fruit was found in the interior of that township 

 until the bees were requested back again ; winding up by 

 asking. " Why, then, is nectar placed in the flowers? " This 

 nearly always brings an answer more or less favorable to 



the bee, which I make more impressive with, "To attract 

 insects that the blossoms may be properly fertilized, pri- 

 marily; and, secondly, for food for these insects, which 

 food for insects, in the case of the bee, is utilized bj- man." 

 And by this time the man or woman who came with a griev- 

 ance, as he or she thought, is won over to the insect side, if 

 not to the bee side, and I hear no more of paying for dam- 

 ages done to flowers by the bees. 



Let our correspondent try this line of reasoning, rather 

 than giving any honey or anything else to pay for dam- 

 ages claimed to be done thru his bees to the flowers in hi.s 

 neighbors' fields or orchards. 



Onondaga Co., N. Y. 



What About the Hare ?-WilI It Become a Pest ? 



BY FRIEDKMANX GREINEK. 



THE reports on the Belgian hare in this and other papers 

 are somewhat conflicting, and people's opinions go 

 widely apart. Mr. Martin says in Gleanings in Bee- 

 Culture that after an absence of nine months from Los 

 Angeles he finds the hare-business — which had been in a 

 flourishing condition before he left — dead and gone ; and, 

 further, that the hare-meat can not compete with other 

 meats. 



Mr. Morrison in the same number of Gleanings says 

 that one firm in Melbourne sent 5,000,000 canned and frozen 

 rabbits to England ; further, that he can buy in Bermuda 

 a whole imported canned rabbit for 24 cents. 



Mr. Martin's and Mr. Morrison's statements do not 

 exactly harmonize, and yet are not so very far apart. Mr. 

 Morrison does not speak of the hare-business from the fan- 

 cier's standpoint. Mr. Martin evidently does. The conser- 

 vative observer has been quite sure from the very beginning 

 that the life of a SSOO-hare boom would be short. There 

 may be a few, who in the future will be willing to pay S5.00 

 or f 10 for a pedigree hare, but the majority of hare-grow- 

 ers must grow the animal for meat-stock and so can not 

 afi'ord to pay exorbitant prices for breeding-stock, particu- 

 larly as the difi'erence between the 50-cent hare and the S500 

 animal does not lie in the latter's greater size, vigor, higher 

 quality of the meat, or any other important feature, but 

 merely in the slight difference of his color, which disap- 

 pears when the pelt is pulled ofl^. The SO-cent hare has 

 more white hairs on the legs and underside than the other, 

 but is just exactly as good for the table. That is what we 

 raise the hare for, and therefore can not see good business 

 sense in it, to pay these fabulous prices. 



Why the meat of the hare could not be made to com- 

 pete with other meats I fail to see. It certainly does in our 

 own home, and others that I know of. We like variety. A 

 few years ago we got tired even of capon meat. My bet- 

 ter half said she did not like those great 10-pound car- 

 casses ; they lasted too long. A hare seldom dresses much 

 over 4 pounds and we can " make away " with one at a 

 meal, perhaps leaving just a few of the choicest slices to 

 put into the dinner-pails of our children to take to school. 

 We aim to have rabbit on the table once a week at least ; 

 we enjoy it and I believe when the public becomes 

 acquainted with this diet, there will be a call for it. 



Mr. Morrison also saj-s that in Australia the rabbit can 

 not be called a pest. I judge from my experience that it 

 will not become a pest here. I can understand that in a 

 congenial climate, with no enemies, the liberated hare 

 might increase rapidly and in the end overrun the country. 

 But there is no danger of that in America where his foes 

 are legion, and the numbers of hunters outnumber the 

 game. One might turn out a large flock here, but he will 

 not see them increase to any appreciable extent. My experi- 

 ence is they soon decrease in numbers. It would indeed be 

 a lucky accident to see a young outdoor brood of hares 

 grow up to maturity unharmed. A grown hare may for a 

 time hold his own, but he is always in danger, and I would 

 not want to keep a valuable animal except within a tight 

 enclosure. 



Not long since the Illinois State Horticultural Society 

 past a resolution concerning the hare as follows : 



''Resolved, That it is the sense of the Illinois State Hor- 

 ticultural Society that hares should in no case be permitted 

 outside of strong cages or enclosures, and that we earnestly 

 request the general assembly of the State of Illinois at its 

 approaching session to enact a law providing, etc., and 

 affixing suitable penalties upon their owner in the event of 

 their being allowed to escape, etc." 



Senator Dunlap, president of the society, stated that it 



