340 



Gleanings in Bee Culture 



found, and in the oth- 

 ers the quantity, if 

 any, is so small that 

 the majority of bees 

 l)ay no attention to it. 

 The mulleins are in 

 a transit ion stage. 

 They have nearly ceas- 

 ed to secrete nectar, 

 and depend on their 

 ])ollen to attract vis- 

 itors. Very likely all 

 pollen tiowers once se- 

 creted nectar. 



In an article i)ub- 

 lished in (i leanings 

 in 1910, page 290. 1 de- 

 scribed how bumble- 

 bees puncture the nec- 

 taries of tiowers, and 

 how both bumble-bees 

 and honey-bees (after 

 the holes are once 

 made) rob the tiowers 

 of their nectar in this 

 abnormal way. I think 

 they deserve to be call- 

 ed robbers in the Bib- 

 lical sense of climbing 

 up "some other way." 

 I stated that in one in- 

 stance I had seen a 

 honey-bee make a hole 

 in the S]iur of the 

 touch - m e - not. T h e 

 senior editor, Mr. K. 

 Pi. Root, promptly ex- 

 pressed his opinion 

 that other insects had 

 started a minute hole, 

 which the h(.)ney-bee, 

 coming on later, en- 

 larged. This seemed 

 very i)robable, and I 

 determined to make 

 further investigations. 



In the si)ring of 1910 

 the nectaries of all the tiowers of the colum- 

 bine in my garden were punctured, and 

 both bumble-bees and honey-bees extracted 

 the nectar through the holes. There was no 

 doubt that the bumble-bees i)ierced the tis- 

 sue, but I was unable to prove that the 

 honey-bees did not. 



In a previous season I had observetl that 

 all the tiowers of the scarlet runner had the 

 nectaries punctured, and that bumble-bees 

 (Boiiibiis terricola) and honey-bees visited 

 the holes constantly, not one of tiiem at- 

 temjiting to obtain the nectar in the normal 

 way. So in thesjjringof 1910 I jjlanted five 

 hills of scarlet runner at a distance of about 

 fifty feet from my ai)iary. By the last of 

 .luly they were in bloom, and ])resented a 

 most attractive api)earance. I examined 20 

 racemes, but not a tiower was i)unctured. 



Throughout the season I kept the scarlet 

 runner under careful surveillance, but with 

 the same result — none of the Mowers were 

 l)unctured. What was the cause of this re- 

 sult, which was diametrically opposite to 



80MK p:arly swarms. 



that i)reviously oliserved? For some rea- 

 son, (luring the entire blooming period of 

 the scarlet runner I saw not a single speci- 

 men of the Bombas terrivola in my garden 

 in 1910. According to my observations it is: 

 this species of bumble-bee which chiefly or 

 alone in this locality bites holes in flowers. 

 So I attribute the absence of holes in the 

 nectaries of the scarlet runner wholly to the 

 absence of this bee. Occasionally on a fair 

 day I would see a honey-bee, or two visit the 

 flowers in the normal way, but their visits 

 were rare and were not continued long. Aj)- 

 parently they were not successful in reach- 

 ing the nectar. Now, when we consider the 

 great number of honey-bees in the vicinity 

 I can not doubt that, if they were able, they 

 would have punctured the tiowers, for in the 

 l)revious season they were very^glad to make 

 use of the holes made by the bumble-V)ces. 

 It seems to me that I liave here obtained 

 conclusive evidence that honey-bees can 

 not make jiunctures in the nectaries of the 

 scarlet runner, though they use them very 



