232 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



April, 1922 



Whenever this has happened the heads which 

 were permitted to rijaen from the first crop 

 contained 30 or more seeds each and often 

 as many as 50, so a seed crop could have 

 been taken from the first cutting. Only 

 an occasional bumblebee could be seen work- 

 ing on the blossoms of the first crop while 

 there were thousands of honej-bees. In this 

 locality the second crop of red clover some- 

 times enables the bees to store a surplus 

 after white and alslike clovers have ceased 

 blooming. 



Where red clover is grown for seed in 

 Idaho, the seed crop is taken from the first 

 cutting instead of from the second as is 

 usual in the East. No doubt the abundance 

 of honeybees there helps to make this pos- 

 sible, for at tlie time of the first bloom bum- 

 blebees could not yet be sufiiciently abund- 

 ant. 



A study .of the pollination of red clover, 

 made by the United States Department of 

 Agriculture and reported in Bulletin No. 289, 



worked on flowers outdde, some could always be 

 seen at work on the clover within the cage. Bees 

 working on the clover witliin the cage were obserTed 

 to collect pollen from the flowers and carry it to 

 the hive. 



As soon as all the flowers in the cage were ma- 

 ture, an area 4 feet square was measured off and 

 all heads within this area were collected, kept sep- 

 arate, and thrashed by hand. Of the 623 heads 

 collected from this area an average of 37.2 seeds 

 per head was obtained. 



The higher yield of seed obtained in the honeybee 

 cage than in the bumblebee cage may be attributed, 

 at least in part, to the larger number of bees which 

 had access to this clover. However, the ratio of 

 honeybees to bumblebees was no greater in the cages 

 than in the clover fields in the vicinity of Ames in 

 1911. 



In the summary of this bulletin the au- 

 thors say: 



The honeybee proved to 

 pollinator of red clover as 

 When the precipitation was 

 mal in June, July and Au 

 nectar-producing plants wer 

 collected large quantities of 

 In order to collect pollen t' 

 of the flowers. In doing 

 the flowers. 



be as efficient a cross- 

 the bumblebee in 1911. 



considerably below nor- 

 :ust, 1911, and but few 

 e to be found, honeybees 



]iollen from red clover. 

 ey must spring the keels 

 this they cross-pollinate 





Screen cage used by the United States Department of Agriculture to determine the efficiency of honey- 

 bees as pollinators of red clover. A colony of bees was placed within the cage and bumblebees were 

 excluded by the one-fourtli-inch mess screen. — Fig. G, Dept. of Agriculture, Bulletin No. 289. 



published in 1915, substantiates the obser- 

 vations previously made by beekeepers as 

 to the ability of honeybees in cross-pollinat- 

 ing red clover, as will be seen from the fol- 

 lowing extracts: 



In order to determine the efficiency of the honey- 

 bee as a cross-pollinator of red clover, a cage 12 

 feet square and 6 feet high, made of galvanized- 

 wire screen having 4 meshes to the linear inch, 

 was erected in the same field as the bumblebee 

 cage. It was previously determined that a mesh 

 of this size would permit a honeybee, or any insect 

 smaller than a honeybee, to pass thru, but would not 

 permit bumblebees to do so. Two weeks before the 

 clover came into bloom a small colony of honeybees 

 was placed in one corner of this cage (Pig. 6). The 

 bees soon learned to pass thru the screen. By the 

 time the clover began to bloom the bees had l;ocome 

 accustomed to the cage, and while most of them 



In the regions where red clover seed is 

 grown, there are usualh^ no other honey 

 plants in bloom during the second bloom of 

 red clover, and beekeepers in these regions 

 know that near large apiaries many more 

 honeybees may be seen working on red clo- 

 ver practically every year than any other 

 insect. No doubt the yield of red clover 

 seed is increased near large apiaries by the 

 many visits of honeybees. If data on the 

 yield of red clover seed near large apiaries 

 were collected, it would, in all probability, 

 show the highest yield in fields adjacent to 

 the apiaries and decreasing yields in more 

 distant fields, as in the case of alsike clover 

 mentioned above. 



