52 



Mr. Gardner in reporting his work on sweet cherries 

 cites the case of an orchard which had not as yet produced 

 a heavy yield. The crop of 1912 was 13 tons. Acting upon 

 his recommendation the owner of the orchard in 1913 cut 

 branches from seedling cherry trees at blooming time and 

 placed them in buckets of water throughout his cherry or- 

 chard. In addition to this several colonies of bees were 

 placed in the orchard. With no better season and with the 

 trees only one year older the crop was 39 tons. Mr. Gardner 

 in commenting on this attributes a large part of this in- 

 creased yield to effective cross-pollination and bees as the 

 agent. 



Mr. F. Howard Brown, Sec'y of this Association writes 

 me that the severe winter of 1911 and 1912 together with 

 foul brood very greatly reduced the number of bees through- 

 out the state. In his own case only one colony survived. 

 In the spring of 1912, the weather during blooming time was 

 cool, cloudy and rainy, with only short intervals of sunshine. 

 During these short periods of sunshine the bees would come 

 out and visit a nearby cherry tree, but would not venture 

 into the peach orchard some 300 feet distant as only one 

 honey bee and a few bumble bees were seen among the peach 

 blossoms. 



This colony of bees was moved into the center of a small 

 block of peach trees so that when they did come out they 

 would work upon the peaeh blossoms. The result was these 

 trees set all the crop they could carry through the following 

 dry season. While other peach orchards that bloomed 

 equally well, but did not have bees in them failed to set a 

 crop. 



Mr. Brown feels confident that this single colony of bees 

 is responsible for his 1912 peach crop in this particular or- 

 chard and recommends all fruit growers to keep bees as a 

 sort of insurance. 



By carefully studying the habits of bees during the 

 blossoming time of our orchards the Ohio Experiment Station 

 has been able to give us a rather definite idea of the amount 

 of work that may be accomplished by a single colony of 

 these useful insects. 



