MAY 15, 1916 



886 



presiding at the National when this was 

 read. The evidence presented by Professor 

 Waite has been accepted by the beekeepeis 

 as conclusive because of its thoroness. He 

 called attention to the fact that flies, wasps, 

 and other insects swarm over the exuding 

 sap on hold-over cankers, and fly to the 

 opening blossoms. So far we have seen no 

 evidence that bees do this, tlie only previous 

 claim of their part in carrying the disease 

 being in conveying the blight organism 

 from blossom to blossom. 



Professor Gossard admits that weather 

 conditions of the past few seasons in Ohio 

 have encouraged the multiplication of aphids 

 in early spring, and that these must play 

 a large part in starting off the infection 

 early in the season. He does not indicate 

 why he thinks them instrumental simply in 

 " starting off " the infection. Prof. J. H. 

 Merrill, of the Kansas Agricultural Experi- 

 ment Station, showed in a paper published 

 in the Journal of Economic Entomology, 

 August, 1915, Vol. VIII., p. 402, that a 

 control of aphids by spraying with " Black- 

 leaf 40 " practically eliminated blight in 

 Doniphan County, Kansas. Similar re- 

 sults have been obtained elsewhere. While 

 other entomologists are rapidly vindicating 

 the bee, our Ohio entomologist seems to be 

 working on another line. 



Professor Gossard also quotes from an 

 article which he intends to publish in the 

 Journal of Economic Entomology. In this 

 he has proven the following points : The 

 bacillus which causes fireblight has not been 

 found in old honey in early spring nor in 

 fresh apple honey, altho in one hive the 

 bees were certainly working on blighted 

 blossoms. When the bacteria were artifi- 

 cially placed either in sterilized or unster- 

 ilized honey, they lived for nearly two days, 

 and it would seem that they are finally 

 killed in honey, altho this is not clear in the 

 paper. There is no reason to believe that 

 they grow in honey, altho he thinks this 

 might be possible. 



These facts should satisfy any preju- 

 diced defender of the bee, to whom Profes- 

 sor Gossard jokingly gives the name " bee 

 monomaniac." Unfortunately the rest of the 

 paper contains " inferences," " presump- 

 tions," and phrases like " it stands a good 

 chance," " inferential evidence," and simi- 

 lar expressions which might lead one to 

 believe that he is anxious to prove some- 

 thing on the bee. He even says, " In an 

 attempt to connect definitely the hive," and 

 in another place, " the direct evidence we 

 are seeking, i. e., to prove the hive an in- 

 fection center," are expressions which do 

 not indicate the right scientific spirit. Bee- 



keepers will not deny proven facts deroga- 

 tory to bees, but we candidly are not in 

 sympathy with attempts to secure proof to 

 bolster up a preconceived idea. 



Professor Gossard evidently thinks that 

 the reason blight spreads so rapidly is that 

 the bacteria are carried to the hive, acci- 

 dentally distributed among the bees, and 

 then carried out to thousands of blossoms. 

 Evidently, if this is true the bee is more 

 harmful than any other insect. Since he 

 has no proof that this is the case, and since 

 he never found the bacteria in the hive, the 

 theory is as yet pure speculation. 



The nature of the inferences will be 

 evident from the following quotation : " We 

 believe we have proved that if one bee car- 

 ries 100,000 bacilli into the hive one day, 

 that on the following one or two days each 

 of 1000 bees has the possibility of carrying 

 a considerable fraction of 100 virulent ba- 

 cilli out to fruit-blossoms, because practi- 

 cally all the bees in the hive are at work 

 during the night curing the honey." In 

 reply to such speculation, let us speculate 

 also that by the next day over nine-tenths 

 of the contaminated honey is already eaten 

 and digested, and surely Professor Gossard 

 will not assume that the bacilli are filtered 

 out. The rest is stored so that, while a bee 

 may be contaminate'd, a " considerable frac- 

 tion " of the organisms will have ceased to 

 trouble the fruit-grower. It is very seldom 

 that any fruit-bloom honey is stored. At 

 that time of the year brood-rearing is near- 

 ly at its height, and practically all of the 

 nectar gathered is used immediately. So 

 far Prof. Gossard has not found the organ- 

 ism in the stored honey; and even when he 

 introduced it artificially it did not live. His 

 evidence is negative so far. 



It would be possible to go thru the paper 

 and point out many unproven suppositions 

 and what appear to us to be unscientific 

 conclusions — even in the face of the facts 

 which are actually helpful to the beekeep- 

 er's estimate of his bees. The author says, 

 " My purpose in investigating the hive has 

 been solely with the object of emphasizing 

 the need of cutting off the supply of blight 

 organisms before they reach the hive." We 

 could wish that his object had been solely 

 to find out what part the bee and other 

 insects play in carrying fireblight, and that 

 he had carried out his investigations with a 

 more open mind, and let the truth come 

 where it may instead of putting himself in 

 the position of " an attempt to connect 

 definitely the hive." We hope, however, 

 that he will not drop the problem until he 

 has found out how much truth there is in 

 his theory. 



