7o4 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Sept. 15 



the same State, but he never tells us any 

 thing' about it. I suspect some mig'ht be 

 surprised to know how much Prof. Benton 

 is doing, and I wish he would get in sight 

 a little more in the bee journals. We've 

 got the men all right enough, just as much 

 as they have across the big pond. 



Prof. Hodge, p. 736, says I may " pooh- 

 bah " at his preachment upon honey for 

 children. Never a "pooh-bah," professor. 

 I indorse all you sajs and wish you would 

 give us a like preachment on the value of 

 honey for old people. More is made of this 

 in Europe than in this country. The heav- 

 iest consumer of honey in my family is my 

 wife's mother, a blessed old Scotch lady in 

 her 84th year, with an intellect as clear as 

 a bell and a memory to beat any of us 

 youngsters. She takes her cup of hot wa- 

 ter and honey before breakfast regularly, 

 and uses a generous supply of honey at the 

 table at least once a day (she never uses it 

 in her tea or coffee, for the only tea or coffee 

 she uses is a glass of milk), and she has a 

 temper as sweet as the honey she eats. 



^ yrom OuY 

 ^y^eiejiborsjieldj 



By 



Slowly fades to red and browu 



Summer's vernal hue ; 

 Angry storm-clouds, dark and chill, 



Take the place of blue. 



Vkf 



The proceedings of the 27th session of 

 the American Pomological Societj', held in 

 Buffalo, a year ago, in conjunction with 

 the bee-keepers, is now before the public in 

 printed form. At that time, it will be 

 remembered, there was much said relative 

 to bees attacking sound fruit. From some 

 remarks made bj' Dr. James Fletcher, Do- 

 minion Entomologist, Ottawa, Canada, I 

 make a few extracts which ought to be 

 enough to settle the question for all time. 

 He said : 



At the last meeting of the Ontario Bee-keepers' 

 Association I had the pleasure of delivering an ad- 

 dress on the "Value of Bees in Fruit Orchards," in 

 •which, among other subjects, I discu.ssed the burning 

 question of whether bees did or could injure the fruit- 

 grower by attacking sound fruit on the trees. The 

 position I took at that time was that, unless fruit was 

 first broken or injured, honej'-bees could not gain 

 access to the juices of the fruits. It appears to me 

 now, however, that the ability of bees to puncture ripe 

 fruit need not take up so much discussion at bee- 

 keepers' meetings as has on some occasions been 

 given to it. If it is so very doubtful whether they can 

 or can not cause injury it seems prima-facie evidence 

 that even if this is possible, which I do not believe the 

 injury occurs so seldom that it need not be considered. 

 If it were a frequently occurring or important injury, 

 some of those who have watched bees either as friends 

 or enemies would have been able to settle the matter 

 long before this Another subject taken up by me at 

 the lime referred to, was " Bees as Fe;" ilizers of Flow- 

 ers;"' and at the request of President Root, of the Na- 



tional Beekeeper's Association, I have prepared a 

 short paper for this evening's meeting on that subject, 

 in which I shall direct your attention to the striking 

 interrelation of plants and in ects, and in which I 

 trust that I maj' be able to lay before you facts which 

 may be new to some of your members, must be of 

 interest to all, and can not but call forth admiration 

 for the marvelous provisions which are to be seen 

 everywhere in nature for the bringing about of good 

 and useful results and preventing waste. It will be 

 found that not onlj' are flowers absolutely necessary 

 to bees, as the source of their food— nectar and pollen 

 — but that bees and other insects are no less necessary 

 to most flowers, so that their perpetuation may be 

 secured. This fact .should be recognized hy the fruit- 

 grower above all others, for, were it not for insects, 

 and particularly for the honey-bee. his crops of fruit 

 would be far less than they are every year, and even 

 in some cases he would get no crop at all. Failure in 

 the fruit crop is more often due, I think, to dull or 

 damp weather at the time of blossoming, which pre- 

 vents insects from working actively in the flowers, 

 than to any other cause. 



The entire essay is very interesting, as it 

 gives a vivid description of the means em- 

 ployed by nature to induce fertilization of 

 flowers ; but as the entire tract can be had 

 free, I suppose, by applying to the printers, 

 The Robert Smith Printing Co., Lansing, 

 Mich., I would refer the reader to that. 



The above was followed by an essay 

 equall}^ good by Prof. M. B. Waite, of the 

 United States Department of Agriculture. 

 Speaking of the agency of bees in attacking 

 cracked fruit he says : 



■Wasps and puncturing insects are the ones which 

 usually make the openings, especially in peifectly 

 sound fruit However, bees rapidly follow in the 

 punctures by other insects. In June and July hun- 

 dreds and thousands of bees may be seen swarming 

 over the early-ripening peaches and Japanese plums, 

 and in going over the rotten fruit the}' carry the 

 spores into the wounds made by the wasps and soldier 

 bugs, and into weather cracks. The peaches cracked 

 open badly by the wet weather this year. Oldmixon 

 was the worst in Maryland, but even varieties like 

 Elberta showed a gr. at inanv weather cracks. Into 

 these cracks the bees penetrated. They even ate 

 large holes in the fruit. I have seen a hole large 

 enough to hold three bees inside of it, and on gather- 

 ing the fruit they were so busily engaged that they 

 were still at work inside the hole. 



Mr. Waite also shows that bees have 

 been instrumental, in his opinion, in carry- 

 ing the germs of pear-blight ; but the dan- 

 ger or damage from this source is rare and 

 slight at best, and Mr. Waite places the 

 following to the credit of the begs : 



The pear-blo=som is a very open one, and is very 

 extensively visited hy a whole list of insects. I started 

 out to get a list of insects which visit pear-blos.soms; 

 hut when I reached the number of forty I gave it up. 

 Nearly all the flying insects, the bee being most active 

 of all, but even beetles and wasps, and occasionally 

 even a humming-bird (the latter, of course, not being 

 an insect) visited the pear-blossoms, and carried the 

 disease along. 



The blossom of the pear is not of the type of wind- 

 fertilized blossoms, but is distinctly of the insect- 

 fertilized type. Now, this matter is so complicated 

 that it will be impossible, in the short time at my dis- 

 posal, to go into the details of fertilization. To make 

 the story short, we may say that, from the biological 

 standpoint, the bees are doing their normal, natural 

 work in visiting the pear and apple blossoms. The 

 blossoms are for the bees to pollinate, are developed 

 by insects, and the insects have been developed in 

 correlation to them. It is a normal, biological process, 

 this visiting of orchard fruit-blossoms by bees. The 

 bees are there performing their proper function. 



In regard to the time of spraying trees, 

 Prof. S. A. Beech says, after explaining 

 the mechanical process of the fertilization 

 of an apple- blossom : 



