606 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



status of the honeybee as a useful insect I 

 must confess that, rooted in my mind only 

 a little less firmly than the law of gravita- 

 tion or of chemical affinity, is the conviction 

 that the age-long association of the honey- 

 bee and of the fruit-grower cannot be dis- 

 sociated as a permanent or general practice, 

 on any account, without great and useless 

 losses to all who make use of fruits or seeds 

 or the plants grown from such seeds. 



If the choice had to be made between the 

 extermination of bees from the earth and 

 the total sacrifice of the two species of 

 fruits — apples and pears — most affected by 

 blight, I confess that, were I consulted, I 

 would at once give the decision to keep the 

 bees and then makeshift with other fruits 

 of which there are plenty in the world. The 

 sacrifice of two or three species of fruits, 

 however im^jortant, would seem to me of 

 less consequence than the immeasun-ble 

 damage that would ensue from the destruc- 

 tion of our most important pollenizer, and 



The kind of swarm that always looks good. From 

 Page Bros., Avon, N. Y, 



the one subject to human control. I am 

 not conscious of any other belief that might 

 disqualify me for such an inquiry; and I 

 regard this creed as legitimate, for, without 

 being a scientific dogmatist, one must adopt 

 at least a few broad and accepted princi- 

 ples as already proved, against which to 

 measure the facts he accumulates or the 

 theories he forms, to asoei-tain if they 

 harmonize. 



You make an inference that, if the hive 

 should be found a distributing center for 

 germs, the bee must at once be considered 

 the very worst of all carriers, and seem to 

 think the conclusion axiomatic. Now let us 

 shift the viewpoint. I think that both fruit- 

 gTowers and beekeepers alike agree that 

 blossom-blight does not appear to a great 

 extent until some time after the blooming 

 season has opened, and that in some sea- 

 sons, like the present one, it arrives very 

 late or not at all. I am quite sure the hive 

 is beyond all reasonable suspicion in the 

 spring, because, so far as we know, the 

 germ does not live in honey for much longer 

 than 70 hours. If, therefore, the orchardist 

 keeps blight centers from his own orchard 

 ))y trimming them out, and puts a sufficient 

 number of hives in the orchard before the 

 bloom appears, will he not insure the earli- 

 est pollination possible, and have a larger 

 number of fruits beyond the danger of 

 blight before it arrives than he could other- 

 wise secure? If the bees themselves carry 

 it later, is it not the more necessary to have 

 I hem present in abundance, while still clean, 

 (o do as much work as possible before the 

 blight-wave appears? If, at the end of the 

 blooming period, they should be carrying it 

 more rapidly than at any other time, wheth- 

 er from flower to flower only, or in accel- 

 erated degree by adding distribution from 

 the hive, is it not the more necessary that, 

 as soon as the bloom arrives, there be in the 

 orchard an abundance of clean bae? to in- 

 sure the earliest pollination possible of 

 every available blossom before the blight- 

 wave appears? Whether a removal of the 

 hive at some stage of the work might be 

 advantageous is an additional question. But 

 is there not a possibility here of manipulat- 

 ing bees to the mutual advantage of both 

 the beekeeper and the fruit-grower? Is it 

 much of a paradox that the orchardist who 

 trims blight from his orchard, and keeps 

 many hives of his own instead of depending 

 on his neighbors' bees, almost uniformly 

 has a larger crop and suffers less than his 

 neighbors from the effects of blight? I 

 plainly stated in the paper criticised 1:hat I 

 did not think any developments relating to 

 the manner of distribution of blight would 



