1879 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



483 



in all the stages of cutting through the skins of 

 grapes. We would especially like to know why you 

 have acquitted the black bees of this pernicious 

 habit. W. P. Hogarty. 



Qulndaro, Kan., Nov. 11, 1879. 



If the truth is going to harm our industry. 

 I should say. " Let us have the harm." You, 

 friend II.. have proved by experiment that 

 bees do not always puncture grapes ; and. if 

 I am correct. I have proved by experiment 

 that they sometimes do. On my own vines 

 they cleaned the fruit all off the Vines as far 

 as they went, and I have heen told so many 

 times by others, that they took all in the 

 same way— especially the 'Delaware grapes, 

 that I have no doubt of it. Several bee- 

 keepers have acknowledged to me that bees 

 did, at times, eat grapes, but said that it was 

 not best to have it generally known. I have 

 mentioned the matter before on these pages, 

 and when I hear it so stoutly maintained 

 ihat bees can not puncture grapes, I do not 

 feel right to keep silent. I do not mean to 

 carry the idea that grapes and bees can not 

 be kept together, for 1 have live hundred 

 vines, just planted right near my hives, for 

 shade. I do this knowing the bees will be 

 far less likely to touch them there than they 

 would be if half a mile or more from the api- 

 ary. There are a great many who know 

 that bees at times destroy grapes, if they 

 will only speak out. I do not accuse black 

 bees of this, because I do not think them 

 smart enough ; but, as I said before, I think, 

 from the experience I have with Italians, I 

 can teach any freshly imported strain to eat 

 sweet grapes. A single bunch, or many 

 bunches, would not. perhaps, be enough ; 

 but get them to working in heaps, as they 

 do when robbing, and they will almost eat 

 through inch boards. Our A B C class, 

 many of them, know how it is. 



BEES EATING GRAPES. 



Bees are unable to injure fruit. This fact has 

 been thoroughly ascertained by a committee for 

 this purpose, appointed conjointly by the Society of 

 Horticulture and Grape Culture, of Bordeaux, 

 France, and the Society of Bee Culture, of La Gi- 

 ronde. Nearly all the members of this last society, 

 owners of vineyards, are among the producers of 

 the famous wine of Bordeaux, and were interested 

 in the result of the investigation. 



Sweet cherries, plums, apricots, pears, apples, 

 peaches, and grapes were successively placed inside 

 several bee hives, and remained there safe. Yet 

 grapes, in France, have very thin skins, thinner 

 than those of the grapes of this country. 



l r ou say in your November No., that bees bite the 

 grapes with their mandibles, and that you can teach 

 them to attack fruit. It is as much impossible, 

 more impossible indeed, for bees to bite a berry of 

 grapes, as for you to bite, with your teeth, a big 

 water-melon, as long as it is whole. 



Furthermore, bees are unable to enlarge a pin 

 hole pierced in the grape berries. We ascertained 

 this fact last September. 



Our bees, finding no sweets in the few flowers 

 which had survived our dry summer, went in 

 swarms to the vineyards, clustering upon and at- 

 tacking every berry damaged by the birds. 



Of course, the owners of the vineyards situated 

 near our apiaries were aroused against our bees, 



and planned to obtain a law limiting the number of 

 colonies to be kept in each locality. 



To convince our neighbors that bees were unable 

 to damage sound berries, wo put some grapes in 

 several colonies. There they remained over 15 days, 

 without a berry being damaged. 



Some having objected that probably the bees of 

 the selected colonies had not yet learned to cut the 

 skin of grapes, my son went to one vineyard with 

 the party. He selected one of the bunches which 

 were the most damaged and the most covered with 

 bees; he cut all the damaged berries and allowed 

 the bees to return to the bunch. Six hours after, 

 the berries were found intact, not a bee having 

 been able to cut them. 



The next day, he returned to the vineyard, cut all 

 the damaged berries of another bunch, and punc- 

 tured with a pin a few of the remaining berries. At 

 evening, he found the punctured berries having a 

 small depression at the place of the puncture; this 

 depression was caused by the bees, who had sucked 

 through the pin hole all the juice they had been 

 able to reach; but the pin hole had not been en- 

 larged. 



The same experiment was repeated on the follow- 

 ing days, and always with the same result. 



I hope that you will put my article in your next 

 issue; for we can not be too careful to avoid giving 

 arms to the enemies of bees and bee culture. 



Chas. Dadant. 



Hamilton, 111., Nov. 15, 1870. 



Your experiments seem very conclusive, 

 friend I)., and I am glad you have made 

 such careful experiments. Still , I can hardly 

 think it possible that all of the grapes of the 

 vines where I saw them, were broken ber- 

 ries. They were Concords, and very ripe. 

 "Would there not be a place about the stem, 

 where a bee could get through the skin V 

 The grapes were literally covered with Ital- 

 ians, which Avere actively loading up, and 

 others were going and coming; when they 

 got through, the vines were stripped. Mr. 

 John White, Chatham Centre, Medina Co., 

 O., had a vine on his house, loaded with 

 grapes. The bees found them, learned how 

 to puncture the skins, so he said, and, in a 

 very short time, they stripped it of every 

 berry. If the berries were also all broken in 

 this case, w r e may be mistaken. Again ; are 

 broken berries of no value to the owner of 

 the vineyard V I do not w 7 ant to fall into 

 error, but, if letting the truth come out will 

 hurt bee-keeners, let us be hurt. 



AGE OF DRONES. 



I notice in Gleanings a communication from L. 

 I). Worth, KeadingCenter, N. Y., in regard to drones 

 living all winter. I have a hive with a large number 

 of active drones now. The hive is strong with bees 

 too. That they are at least 3 weeks old is sure, as I 

 removed a black queen about that time, and the 

 worker bees arc nearly all Italians, while the drones 

 are black. E. H. Wynkoop. 



( atskill, N. Y., Nov. 17, 187ft. 



FDN. THAT WON'T SAG. 



Did you ever try mixing plastering hair with wax 

 for making fdn. to be used in brood chamber? If 

 not, please try one pound. $ 



[No; I have thought of it, but felt sure the bees 

 would bite off the hairs; if they did not, yet the wax 

 would not be near as stout as tine wires make it, and 

 it would be nearly if not quite as much trouble. We 

 have some ftln. now in the hives, containing the 

 libers of raw cotton, but the weather is too cool to 

 have it worked out.] 



