682 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Sept. 



whicli oozes from the galls, as in the case of the 

 elm, or cockscomb galls. 



This whole matter of galls is very interesting. 

 How strange that the sting of a minute insect, in 

 laying its eggs, should so irritate a plant or the 

 plant tissue, that hypertrophy, or excessive growth, 

 should ensue! Though this maybe an unhealthy 

 growth, yet it is just what the insect needs, for in 

 this it lives and grows, and becomes fat and plump, 

 as it feeds upon its own home. A. J. Cook. 



Agricultural College, Mich., Aug. 7, 1888. 



Fiiend Cook, in your opening remarks 

 yon intimate that these exciescences may 

 foim without the agency of insects. I hope 

 you did not mean to sav this, for it is hard 

 for me to assent to the idea that a healthy 

 growing basswood-tree would be guilty of 

 dishguiing ils foliage in this way. It has 

 been an old fancy of mine from childhood, 

 that these mites, or insects, have a trick, 

 known from generation to generation, of 

 causing the leaf to swell out in this shape, 

 so as to form a home for them, and [ want 

 to know if I have got to abandon it. The 

 oak-ai)ple, found on some species of oak- 

 trees, wliich we used to lind so delicious in 

 childhood, that has a crisp shell on the out- 

 side, always contains a worm, or several 

 worms, in the core ; and as they always 

 grow attached to a leaf, I supposed the 

 worm caused the leaf to produce these beau- 

 tiful spotted apples. When we were school- 

 boys, we would sometimes find a tree of a 

 certain kind of oak that would be so covered 

 with these apples that we could, by climb- 

 ing up, gethatsful of them. When they are 

 quite young, and growing thrifty, the outer 

 shell is not only sweet and juicy, but it has 

 a tartlike taste, somewhat like lemonade or 

 delicious fruit ; and then others had a beau- 

 tiful aromatic flavor, different in Various 

 species of oak, that use to make tliem so at- 

 tractive that we schoolboys would go a mile 

 or more in pursuit of "them. Sometimes 

 when the weather was quite wet and rainy, 

 these galls would contain a delicious liquid 

 inside of the shell — a sort of aromatic lem- 

 onade of Nature's own compounding ; that 

 is, after the insect had diverted Nature 

 from her ordinary track, according to my 

 theory. 



DO BEES EAT PEACHES? 



FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS IN THE MATTER. 



fHE matter has come up a great many 

 times in regard to bees and peaches, 

 and perhaps more this present season 

 than heretofore. A few days ago a 

 neighbor told me that our bees had 

 taken complete possession of his peach 

 orchard. They were "cleaning the fruit 

 right off the trees, and would not let anybody 

 go near the trees." I told him they were 

 eating the decayed peaches and no others. 

 He would not believe me until I took him 

 down to our fruit-hoMse and showed him 

 several baskets of sweet clingstone peaches. 

 These sweet clingstones are the first that 

 rii)en, and this year they began rotting, a 

 great part of them, before they got mellow 

 enough to eat. I have taken considerable 

 time and pains to look into the whole matter, 



and I think I understand it. I bought of a 

 neighbor about two bushels of these peaches, 

 and I immediately sorted out all decayed 

 and mellow ones. Before I got through, the 

 bees were busy on the decayed ones; then 

 they commenced on the mellow ones; and 

 where the skin was bruised they rai)idly en- 

 larged the opening, and soon finished the 

 peach. For two or three hours, not a bee 

 was to be found on those that had been sort- 

 ed out as perfect. By noon, however, knots 

 of bees were gathered in different parts of 

 almost every basket. I sorted them again, 

 and found little white spots, indicating that 

 rot had commenced since I went over them 

 in the morning; and whenever the bees 

 found these indications that decay had com- 

 menced on a small spot, they pushed their 

 tongues into it, and rapidly madetheopening 

 larger. I then placed a part of the peaches 

 indoors, where the bees could not get at 

 them. In about three hours' time, as before, 

 quite a number of the peaches showed decay- 

 ed spots. Some had commenced to get 

 mellow, but the greater part of them com- 

 menced to rot before getting mellow at all. 

 Well, wherever they were left out of doors 

 the bees found out what was going on, and 

 kept going over the peaches, waiting for a 

 soft spot to appear. Before these soft spots 

 appeared, a whitish down always indicated 

 where rot Mas going to conmience. The 

 appearance was something like mildew. 

 Good peaches, however, that became mellow 

 before this rotting commenced, were never 

 attacked or injured by the bees at all. If, 

 after the peaches get mellow, tliey are tum- 

 bled around in the baskets so as to bruise the 

 skin, they will be attacked by the bees. 

 They will also, within 24 hours, as a rule, 

 commence to decay if the bees do not get at 

 them. 



Now, friends, I think you have the truth 

 of the whole matter. The bees do not injure 

 sound peaches. They will, however, get 

 through the skin at once when this process 

 of decay commences, and it will start out 

 through the basket of peaches in just a few 

 hours— that is, if you sort out every decayed 

 peacli, and every one that shows any symp- 

 toms of decay, at nine o'clock in the moriiiuR', 

 during hot rainy weather, by noon you will 

 find a good many that have commenced to 

 rot— enough so that the bees will get at them. 

 In a few hours more, the iteach will some- 

 times be too rotten for sale or for use. Now, 

 I do not know whether this kind of rot 

 always occurs with these sweet clingstones 

 or not. I have noticed it several seasons, 

 but I never saw it so bad as this season. 

 It commences when the peach is nearly ripe, 

 and it may attack fruit l)efore it is mellow, 

 or after it is mellow, oi- not at all. It is not 

 the same kind of rot that spoils fruit when 

 it rots from overripeness. If you get a rem- 

 edy for the rot, you will also have a remedy 

 for the bees ; and this kind of rot is certainly 

 a very serious matter to fruit-growers. 



Now, then, there i.s one other trouble : 

 When your fruit gets bruised so as to break 

 the skin, the bees will rapidly take out the 

 inside. This makes them a nuisance. Peo- 

 ple who handle fruit, however, greatly 

 magnify the effects ; and my neighbor was 



