404 



^LtiANiNGS IN BEE CULTURE 



beiTv is a collection of liny separate parts, 

 not all of them would be broken; yet the 

 i-a.'^pberry in a short time is sucked perfect- 

 ly dry of juice. My bees did not work ex- 

 tensively on the strawberries or blackber- 

 ries, although they did some work there ; but 

 the red raspberries they were as crazy for 

 as they would be for a lump of sugar. 

 Raspberries cannot be picked very unripe, 

 as they adhere to the core, and crumble if 

 forcibly removed. If picked closely every 

 day 1 do not think the bees would injure 

 many; but in picking for home use, or for 

 markets near by, I feel sure the bees would 

 take their toll quite freely. They did of my 

 home berries picked every other day, but 

 left till fully ripe, as otherwise they are 

 sour and not of as good flavor as when 

 sweet and ripe. I firmly believe they punc- 

 ture the thin delicate skin themselves, or it 

 may be that it is so thin that they suck the 

 juice through it. 



Bees were not nearly so plentiful among 

 the fruit-bloom in the spring as in the later 

 season among the fruit. For home use this 

 was not ])articularly annoying; but I can 

 well believe that in commercial fields they 

 might do a good deal of damage. As I 

 preferred bees to berries I was not dis- 

 tressed; but 1 can see that the fruit-man 

 might not feel just that way about it. As 

 larger fruits are usually picked for market 

 before fully ripe they very likely would not 

 prove very troublesome; but with small 

 fruit sold near at home, and not picked 

 until ripe, I am quite sure bees would prove 

 a nuisance. 



Bees are supposed to fertilize cucumbers. 

 Our cucunib('i-bed.s were witliin a few rods 

 of tlie bees this season. They did not pro- 

 duce as well as they should. I hardly ever 

 saw a bee near them. Whether this was 

 because of better feeding-ground near at 

 hand, or because the large leaves from the 

 vines hid the blossoms completely, I do not 

 know ; but the bees did not visit the cucum- 

 bers as freely as I should have expected 

 tliem to. 



Glover, Vt. 



[It is a well-known fact that bees will 

 work on overripe fruit, and they are often 

 troublesome in this way, especially at fruit- 

 picking time. It has been definitely prov- 

 en, however, that bees cannot puncture the 

 skin of the fruit. It must be punctured by 

 some other insect, by a bird, or, as some- 

 times happens, by bursting due to the over- 

 ripe condition. Now, then, the question is 

 whether such fruit as is punctured by birds 

 or insects, or burst because of being over- 

 ri^je, is of any value, commercially speak- 

 ing. Such fruit will always rot almost im- 

 mediately, and the contention of the bee- 

 keeper has always been that the bees in 

 sucking the juice from such really unmar- 

 ketable fruit is no loss, for the fruit then 

 dries up and the rot is not communicated 

 to other fruit close by. This is especially 

 true in case of grapes, and should also be 

 true, we think, in the case of strawberries. 



Bees are used so extensively for pollinat- 

 ing cucumber-blossoms that we feel sure 

 there were other flowers more attractive to 

 the bees in blossom at the same time. — Eu.] 



VALUE OF BEES IN STRAWBERRY CULTURE 



BY L. T. FLOYD 



Some time ago while traveling I chanced 

 to mention to some people whom I met that 

 we had received one thousand dollars for 

 the crop of strawberrries we had grown on 

 an acre on our farm at Central Norton. 

 From them the story found its way into the 

 local paper, and since then we have received 

 many inquiries about it ; and as the subject 

 seemed to be of interest to so many I want 

 to state one of the reasons for our getting 

 this crop in a year when berries were gen- 

 erally a failure. 



We had a fairly good stand of plants on 

 this patch the season before. They winter- 

 ed fairly well, but the spring was backward 

 and cold. They began to bloom about June 

 I. On the night of June 4 we had a heavy 

 frost wliich killed all the blossoms down to 

 the smallest buds. We tliought our croj) 



was doomed, because we remembered a sea- 

 son c^hout seven years before when a lighter 

 frost I'uined our crop. This was before we 

 began keeping bees. 



The evening after the frost it rained — a 

 good soaking rain. This caused the plants 

 to set more fruit-buds. Out of the crowns 

 where one or two fruit-stems had been be- 

 fore, tliere spi'ang many more; and in about 

 ten days the patch was wliite with blossoms 

 again. Near this patch we had fourteen 

 colonies of bees, and at this time of year 

 the hives were brimming full, and every fine 

 day while the plants were in bloom one 

 could hear their busy hum quite a distance 

 from the patch. 



The spring being so cold, there wei'e very 

 few wild bees or other insects, and so we 

 had lu de])end solely on our own bees for 



