166 



"HE AMERICAN BEE KEEPER. 



June 



"Not mauy years ago, the grangers 

 of Australia and New Zealand deter- 

 mined to introduce the plant, in the 

 hopes of establishing it as a regular 

 forage crop. They imported the seed, 

 and sowed it, with the result of a 

 magnificent yield, • 1'he meadows 

 were crimson with blossoms, and but- 

 terflies and moths revelled in their 

 bountiful nectar. But when the har- 

 vest time arrived, and the crop was 

 gathered for its seed, no seed were 

 found. Why? What did it mean? 

 It meant simply that those who 

 brought the clover seed from America 

 or Europe, had failed to consider the 

 vital needs of the clover, and had left 

 its affinity behind. The bumble-bee 

 could have told them all, but he was 

 not consulted in the matter. While 

 there were butterflies in plenty in 

 Australia and New Zealand, there 

 happened to be no native bumble-bee; 

 so our cloistered clover refused to be 

 comforted, pined, and died without 

 posterity. Each new crop could be 

 insured only by importation of for- 

 eign seed. But the thrifty agricul- 

 turists, guided by Darwinian science, 

 soon grasped the situation, and im- 

 ported, and at length naturalized, the 

 indispensable bumble-bee, and nov/ 

 the clover blossoms, and is content in 

 its new home, where, during the last 

 decade, both flower and bee have be- 

 come thoroughly established." 



The American Bee Journal of May 

 13, has this quotation from a foreign 

 paper: "The bumble-bees have been 

 a great success in Canterbury (New 

 Zealand), and clover seed has been 

 exported to England the last three or 

 four years. It is estimated that the 

 clover seed crop is worth 30,000 

 pounds sterling per annum to this 



Province, and this is entirely due to 

 the successful importation of the 

 bumble-bee." 



Ed. Am. Bee Keei^er, Dear Sir: — 

 I gave your paper the Am. Bee Keep- 

 er, Vol. VII, No. 4, to my neighbor, 

 a brave old learned farmer, to read 

 the article of Apis dorsata and asked 

 him to give me his opinion about it, 

 and here rs his answer: 



"All farmers will agree with the 

 views of Mr. D. N. Ritchey on page 

 107, and hardly a single one will en- 

 dorse the reasons of those 14 who 

 were against importing this bee. For 

 the two Sparrow men and those who 

 said the Government had no business 

 to import improved stock, forgot the 

 talian Bee. By its importation it 

 gave many failures and the thing 

 went very slowly, until the Govern- 

 ment took it into their own hands. 

 And a lame argument is that of a cer- 

 tain man who made experiments to 

 breed a longer tongue in his bees. 

 Now to introduce the Apis dorsata 

 would be a positive damage to those 

 who have a red clover strain of bees. 

 How many of those bee -keepers are 

 there, and shall the balance of the 

 other bee-men wait some fifty years 

 longer, and should the interests of a 

 few bee-keepers stand before the gen- 

 eral good? But they all forget the 

 chief argument, in favor of Apis 

 dorsata, it is this: The first cut of 

 the red clover gives few clover seeds, 

 because the bumble-bees are very 



