238 



Gleanings in Bee Culture 



Manzanita blossoms which furnish honey for early brood-rearing. 



papers complaining that they were becom- 

 ing so numerous that they threatened to 

 consume the nectar of all of the flowers and 

 leave none for the domestic bee. The alarm, 

 however, seems to have been groundless; 

 for in 1905 the Canadian Department of 

 Agriculture received a letter from the secre- 

 tary of an agricultural association in New 

 Zealand inquiring what species of Bombus 

 pollinated the red clover in that country. 

 Three kinds of bumblebees {Bombus terres- 

 tris, B. hortorum, and B. hortorum variety 

 Horrisfllus) , descended from those import- 

 ed in 1885, are stated to exist in New Zea- 

 land; but B. ferresfris, the most abundant 

 species, was regarded as unsuitable for clo- 

 ver pollination, owing to the shortness of 

 its tongue. It was believed that the best 

 results had not yet been obtained, and that 

 it was desirable to introduce other and more 

 suitable species. 



According to Carl Vogt, one of the most 

 important foundations of the wealth of Eng- 

 land is found in the cattle, which feed prin- 

 cipally upon red clover. "Englishmen," 

 says Hipckel, "preserve their bodily and 

 mental powers chiefly by making excellent 

 meat — roast beef and beefsteak — their prin- 

 cipal food. The English owe the superiority 

 of their brains and minds over other na- 

 tions to their excellent meat." There is no 

 need to enter into any discussion here as to 

 whether Ha^ckel's logic is sound or not, but 

 it will hardly be denied that the production 

 of this meat depends to a great extent upon 

 the industrious bumblebee. 



The dependence of the red clover upon 

 bumblebees, either in this country or in 

 Europe, is, however, not as complete as has 



been assumed. It has 

 been shown repeatedly 

 in Gleanings that, un- 

 der certain conditions, 

 flowers are very freely 

 visited by honeybees, 

 and hundreds of pounds 

 of red-clover honey are 

 produced. T/ndoubted- 

 ly the most remarkable 

 illustration ever record- 

 ed of the relation sus- 

 tained by honeybees to 

 the inflorescence of the 

 red clover was given by 

 E. R. Root in Glean- 

 ings for 1906, Aug. 1, 

 p. 990. Near his north 

 beeyard there were sev- 

 eral fields of red clover. 

 When the farmers be- 

 gan cutting these fields, 

 the cutter-kni\ es of the 

 mowers stirred up a 

 great number of bees, 

 which so fiercely at- 

 tacked both the horses 

 and men that it looked 

 as though they were 

 not going to let any- 

 body cut off their honey 

 supply. At the same 

 time, a few miles away, near his south yard 

 there was a big field of rank clover on which 

 scarcely a bee was to be found. Here on 

 clover fields only two miles apart the behav- 

 ior of the bees was diametrically opposite. 

 This is explained by a difference in the 

 rainfall of the two localities. At the north 

 yard there had been a drouth the whole sea- 

 son, and the corolla tubes of the red clover 

 were so short that the nectar was readily ac- 

 cessible to the bees; but at the south yard 

 there had been plentiful rains, and the tubes 

 were so long that the bees could not reach 

 the nectar. Pollination is also occasionally 

 effected by other long-tongued bees, besides 

 those mentioned, as well as by butterflies. 



Incidentally it may be added that Darwin 

 pointed out that the number of bumblebees 

 in England was determined by the number of 

 cats. Mice rob bumblebees' nests, and are 

 in turn killed by cats; consequently if there 

 are few cats there are many mice and few 

 bumblebees. Here Professor Huxley sug- 

 gested that, as old maids are fond of cats, 

 and usually keep one or more of these ani- 

 mals as pets, it depended upon them wheth- 

 er there should be an abundant crop of red 

 clover or not. It is certainly a curious in- 

 stance of the intimate correlation of every 

 part of nature. 



Three other genera of very common bum- 

 blebee flowers may be found in almost any 

 old-fashioned garden. They are the lark- 

 spurs [Delphinium] , the aconites, or monks- 

 hoods (Aconitimi), and the columbines 

 {Aquilegia) . They all agree in having the 

 nectar concealed in long spurs, or nec- 

 taries, which vary in different species. The 

 tongues of different species of bumblebees 



