THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



as safe as any, why is it so 

 generally used? More of these 

 frames are now used by practical 

 apiarists, than of all others com- 

 bined, and the number is constantly 

 increasing. It has worked its way 

 to its high position on the pedestal 

 of public opinion, solely on its own 

 merits, and that too in the face of 

 tremendous opposition, and my 

 opinion is that ere long it will 

 become the standard of the world, 

 and fully acknowledged and admit- 

 ted as such. For these reasons I 

 advise beginners to adopt this 

 frame at the start, believing they 

 will never change, and by so doing 

 they will not in a short time find 

 themselves decidedly out of date 

 and far behind the times. 

 Foxboro, April, 1883. 



BEES AND HORTICULTURE. 



By a. J. Cook. 



If some of our fruit-growers 

 were to write upon this subjept, 

 they would place as the title : Bees 

 versus Horticulture. Some of our 

 ablest entomologists are persuaded 

 that bees do not always play the 

 role of friends to the pomologist. 



What I am to say of bees would 

 apply equally well, in some cases, 

 to many other sweet-loving insects, 

 as the wild bees, the wasps, and 

 many of the dipterous, or two- 

 winged flies ; only as early in the 

 season other insects are rare, while 

 the honey bees, though less numer- 

 ous than they are later in the 

 season, are comparatively abun- 



dant, even early in the spring 

 months. 



My first proposition is, that 

 plants only secrete nectar that they 

 may attract insects. And why this 

 need of insect visits? It is that 

 they may serve as " marriage 

 priests," in the work of fertilizing 

 the plants. As is well known, many 

 plants, like the willows and the 

 chestnuts, are dioecious. The male 

 element, the pollen, and the female 

 element, the ovules, are on different 

 plants, and so the plants are abso- 

 lutely dependent upon insects for 

 fertilization. The pollen attracts 

 the insects to the staminate flowers, 

 while the nectar entices them to visit 

 the pistillate bloom. Some varieties 

 of the strawberries are so nearly di- 

 oecious, that this luscious fruit, of 

 which good old Isaac Walton 

 wrote : "Doubtless God might have 

 made a better fruit than the straw- 

 berry, but doubtless God never 

 did," would in case of some varie- 

 ties be barren, except for the kindly 

 ministrations of insects. Other 

 plants are monoecious ; that is, the 

 stamens and pistils are on the same 

 flower, but the structural peculiar- 

 ities are such, that unless insects 

 were wooed by the coveted nectar, 

 fertilization would be impossible. 

 Many of the plants with irregular 

 flowers, like the orchids, as Darwin 

 has so admirably shown, are thus 

 entirely dependent upon insects to 

 effect fructification. In many of 

 these plants the structural modifica- 

 tions, which insure fertilization con- 

 sequent upon the visits of insects, 

 are wonderfully interesting. These 

 have been dwelt upon at length by 



