May 30, 1907 



"yi^jEjjfe^' — ^C 



453 



American ^ee Jonrnal 



Bees as Blossom Fertilizers 



BY C. P. DADANT 



Since the publication in the Ameri- 

 can Bee Journal of ray articles concern- 

 ing spraying of fruit-blossoms, and the 

 usefulness of the bees in the fertiliza- 

 tion of flowers, I have had letters from 

 a number of bee-keepers and fruit- 

 growers. The sentiment is now very 

 clearly on all sides in favor of waiting 

 to spray until the bloom his disap- 

 peared. Even one of the dealers in 

 sprayers, who, until lately has recom- 

 mended to spray trees during bloom, 

 has changed his advice to " spraying 

 when the bloom is beginning to drop." 

 The very strong assertion made by 

 Senator Dunlap, that " no intelligent 

 horticulturist will hereafter spray dur- 

 ing bloom " is bearing its fruits and 

 helping our cause. 



Allow me to add another testimony 

 to that already gathered on this sub- 

 ject. W. T. Gary, of Wakenda, Mo., 

 requested one of his bee-friends to in- 

 form me of his experience with bloom 

 spraying, and I received the following 

 terse letter which is the more weighty 

 for its conciseness : 



Chillicothe, Mo., March 23, 1907. 



Mr. C. p. Dadant:— There is a man in the 



neighborhood who sprayed his apple-trees in 



full bloom-, consequently he destroyed his 



apple crop and killed a great many of my bees. 



Yours truly, G. W. Babb. 



However, it is necessary to state that 

 spraying must not be long delayed 

 after the bloom, in the case of the ap- 

 ple, for the destruction of the codling- 

 moth, and we find in Bulletin No. 114, 

 of the Agricultural Experiment Station 

 of the University of Illinois, the follow- 

 ing remark : 



"Taking into consideration the variation 

 in the different clusters on the same tree, and 

 the fact that the calyx cavities can be more 

 readily reached by the spray if the calyx is 

 entirely open, rather than partially closed, it 

 is probable that the entire orchard should be 

 sprayed within 7 days from the time that 

 most petals have fallen." 



They add that in a mixed orchard 

 spraying may be commenced upon the 

 earlier blossoming varieties before the 

 others are ready. 



But I did not sit at my desk to talk 

 spraying ; what I meant to do was to 

 give another evidence of the usefulness 

 of the honey-bee in bloom fertilization. 



I have an orchard of 2 acres, one- 

 third in Kieffer pears, the other two- 

 thirds in Duchess. Every orchardist 

 knows that the Kieffer pear is a very 

 bad self-fertilizer, and that it is neces- 

 sary to have other trees among the 

 Kieffers to help fertilize the bloom. 

 Nurserymen usually recommend the 

 Garber pear for this purpose. It is very 



similar to the Kieft'er, and a very 

 strong grower -in most respects a pear 

 like the KielTcr. In our case, the 

 Duchess being only a short distance 

 away, has always proven sufficient to 

 help the Kieffers out, and our crops 

 have been large, even too large for the 

 good of the trees. 



This spring the trees opened into 

 bloom at the beginning of the cold 

 April weather, and remained in bloom 

 for nearly 2 weeks with hardly an hour 

 of sunshine sufficient for the bees to 

 work on the blossom. The result is, 

 that even with the best fertilizers the 

 Duchess trees have less than a third of 

 the fruit on that they usually have. 

 But the Kieffers, which have been left 

 to their own resources for pollen-fertil- 

 ization, have only a fruit here and 

 there, evidently produced in the very 

 short time during which the bees came 

 to them. A neighbor who has none 

 other than the Kieffer in one orchard, 

 has not a single fruit on the trees. The 

 other varieties of pears were evidently 

 too far away for any bees to visit both 

 in the exceedingly short time allowed 

 them by the weather. 



It has been stated, time and again, 

 that there are varieties of strawberries 

 which require the agency of insects for 

 fertilization, as they are deprived of 

 stamens and must be fertilized by the 

 pollen of other varieties ; but very few 

 people have stopped to think that when 

 any tree or plant which has been 

 domesticated becomes an ineffectual 

 self-fertilizer, the bees are impera- 

 tively needed to help them out. 



The honey-bee has been accused of 

 carrying the blight from one tree to 

 another among the pear trees, as if 

 there was no other method by which 

 the fungus of this disease could be car- 

 ried from tree to tree in an orchard. 

 The same people who are so prompt to 

 call the bee to account for imaginary 

 damages, fail to bear in mind that in 

 many cases they would have no fruit at 

 all were it not for the pollen-bearers, 

 which, unconsciously, do the work that 

 no other agency could do as well as 

 they. 



So we may rejoice in thelittle honey- 

 bee, for the more we investigate the 

 better we see its usefulness in more 

 ways than one. 



Hamilton, 111. 



Clipping Queens' Wings, Etc. 



BY PROF. A. J. COOK 



I am requested to give the reasons, 

 pro and con, for clipping the wings of 

 the queen-bee. I am glad to do this, 

 as it is to my miad a well-established 

 fact that it is always advisable to do 

 this, and in some cases it is a tremen- 



dous advantage. We know of a cer- 

 tainty that the bees will never swarm 

 and go off unless the queen goen with 

 them. They may come forth from the 

 hive, and often will do so, and will also 

 often cluster with no queen following 

 them, but unless the queen joins the 

 bees they will in all and every case go 

 back and not go off to start a new 

 home. Of course, it would not do them 

 any good to go forth without a queen, 

 as with no queen and no eggs to rear 

 one they would soon dwindle away and 

 come to nothing. The purpose of the 

 clipping, then, is obvious. We may 

 lose our queen, as she may wander out 

 and fail to return to the hive and be 

 lost, but the colony can not be lost, at 

 least not till a new queen is reared in 

 the old colony. 



In case a farmer keeps bees, and 

 does not wish to remain about the api- 

 ary all day at the swarming season, he 

 can have his wife or some child keep 

 watch, and as the bees swarm out the 

 watcher marks the hive and catches 

 and cages the queen, which is easily 

 and quickly don^, and as the farmer 

 comes to the house at noontide or later, 

 he can divide the colony or proceed as 

 his plan dictates, and so arrange for 

 the safety of his bees with no loss, and 

 in the cheapest way possible. 



My brother has kept bees for years, 

 and with marked success, and at the 

 same time runs a stock and berry farm. 

 He told me last summer, as he has 

 often told me before, that he finds his 

 bees by no means the least profitable 

 part of his ranch or farm, and he 

 would be slow to part with them. He 

 manages the swarming as just sug- 

 gested. He would not feel that he 

 could give time to remain with the 

 bees, and he would be even more slow 

 to have his wife bothered with the 

 hiving, but she makes no objection at 

 all to watching and caging the queens, 

 and so the whole matter of swarming 

 is easily and cheaply managed. 



I have never heard but three objec- 

 tions urged to the practise of clipping 

 queens. The first is that it injures the 

 queens, and so is unwise. I do not be- 

 lieve that it is an injury to the queen 

 at all. I have practised this plan for 

 years, and so far as I could see the 

 clipped queens were no whit behind the 

 others in performance. Indeed, the 

 ants do this very thing themselves ; 

 that is, the worker ants bite off the 

 wings of the queens, and surely the 

 queen-ants seem to lose no potency or 

 virility by this pruning. No, the 

 queens are not made any the less pro- 

 lific, and are in every way as good. 



It has also been claimed that the 

 bees are more likely to supersede the 

 queen if her wings were clipped. 

 Long experience and close observation 

 make me very sure that this is not true. 

 The third point urged is that it some- 

 what injures the appearance of the 

 queen. This may be so, but as we see 

 the queen so seldom I should hardly 

 think that this could be urged very 

 seriously. 



How TO Clip. 



Some claim to be nimble enough to 

 clip the queen as she walks on the 

 comb. I could never succeed this way. 

 I catch the queen by the wings with 

 my right hand, then grasp her by the 



