24 



conditions or when the wild bees have become depressed. 

 Just how many colonies are necessary for a ^ven acreage 

 of trees or vegetables has to be ascertained by the grower, 

 but the fact that remains that in order to secure a maximum 

 crop, to be independent of the neighboring bee-keeper, or of 

 uncontrollable weather conditions, under the acute compe- 

 tition of western production, it has become necessary not 

 only to grow more fruit and vegetables, but to be assured 

 of a maximum crop. 



The game is to produce fruit, not merely to cultivate 

 plants or trees. The producer prunes, cultivates, fertil- 

 izes with carefully compounded mixtures, sjvays for 

 scale and codling moth and rears splendid tree specimens. 

 But how many have really subjected to control the one 

 factor which insures the crop, the control of the trans- 

 mission of pollen? It is this opportunity to control fer- 

 tilization Avhieh as insurance is seized by progressive 

 growers today. (Applause^ 



A Member. How far apart were those two orchards 

 you speak of where one was not bearing and the other did 

 bear? 



Dr. Gates. I can't answer that definitely. It is re- 

 ported that they were exactly comparable. They may have 

 been a mile or two apart but in the same immediate locality. 



A Member. Do you think bees would go a quarter 

 of a mile? 



Dr. Gates. They will go three or four miles. The 

 ordinary range of traveling is two miles. Under pressure, 

 when there is a scarcity of nectar, the same as last year, they 

 will go three or four miles, and cases are on record where 

 they have gone seven miles across a country; but those are 

 ■extraordinary. In all probability, being in a pothole and 

 having plenty to eat in this hole, the colony down there 

 did all the work. 



Mr. R. H. Race. I would like to ask the speaker if he 

 would like to have us understand that we would have no 

 fruit if we didn't have insects of some kind to gather 

 pollen? ■^ 



Dr. Gates. I don't want to preclude the possibil- 

 ity, the bare possibility, that pollen is transmitted by the 

 wind, to a certain extent; but there are any quantity of ex- 

 periments on record which show that they are only very 

 'small in number and probably accidental. 



