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MR. PURRINGTON. It is fair that both sides of the 

 subject should be heard. We have had from Dr. Gates a 

 very entertaining and instructive lecture on the uses of bees, 

 and you will hear still more from Professor Chenoweth of 

 the Agric. College on their usefulness to you, so I think 

 it is well that some orchardist should set forth to the bee- 

 keepers the benefits of the orchards to the apiaries, as well. 



THE VALUE OF ORCHARDS TO THE BEEKEEPER 

 By Wilbur M. Purrington. 



It is my good fortune as a keeper of bees to be located 

 in the Hampshire foot hills some six miles from Northamp- 

 ton just across the narrow Mill River from the large fine 

 orchard of Baldwin apples of Edwin and E. Cyrus Miller; 

 who Avith their forefathers have been growing apples in that 

 same locality for more than one hundred and fifty years. 



Within three miles of my apiary there is also the farm 

 formerly owned by Prescott Williams of one thousand trees 

 famed locally as the big orchard of years ago and at least 

 ten other farms with orchards of from fifty to three hundred 

 trees, so that there are within the flight of my bees more 

 than five thousand apple trees. I am surrounded in May 

 with apple bloom" as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers." 



To the south the hills slope away to the meadows along 

 the Connecticut river while to the north and west they rise 

 to ten or twelve hundred feet; and as the trees bloom first 

 in the lowlands we have a succession of blossoms from low- 

 lands to highlands prolonging the period during which the 

 nectar may be gathered. 



I am in a position therefore to appreciate the orchard 

 value to the apiary, and while only an amateur naturalist 

 have observed for hours and hours with greatest interest in 

 my apairary of some fifty colonies, the awakening of the 

 bees with the opening of the fruit bloom, the rush of flight, 

 the high pitch of the note of wings humming in the hurry, 

 the emergence of young bees covered with down like a 

 chicken fluttering before the hives to mark the location be- 



