8 



THE LANCASTER FARMER. 



[ January, 



deep enriclied with vegetable life. Some 

 plants flourish most vigorously in a particular 

 locality or soil, and it is almost impossible to 

 eradicate them fi'oni it, which is doubtless 

 owing to the soil being agreeable to their 

 nature ; hence tlie importance of applying the 

 proper compost to sustain the soils in fertility. 

 Some soils may be most benefited by vegetable 

 manure, other soils by animal, and otliers 

 agaiu by mineral manures. And as the sources 

 from which to obtain fertilizers are numerous, 

 they may be given guano, gypsum, lime, salt, 

 cattle dung, chicken dirt, slaughter-house re- 

 fuse, boue-dust, wood ashes, forest leaves, 

 green sand or marl, sea weeds or kelp, char- 

 coal, offal of breweries and tanneries, of cot- 

 ton, woolen and paper mills, clover and other 

 grasses, blood of animals, urine, dead car- 

 casses, human ordure and the useless plants 

 which grow spontaneously in our fields and 

 highways. There are other ingredients be- 

 sides the above that are profitably employed 

 as laud enrichers. But the most important 

 consideration with farmers should be the most 

 useful manure for the least money. It is not 

 every fai-mer that can aflbrd to buy guano 

 and other high priced fertilizers. Cheap land, 

 cheap manure and skillful culture are abso- 

 lutely essential to ensure success in farming. 

 The manures which are best known and 

 universally used l)y our farmers are the barn- 

 yard pile and burnt lime, and their value 

 upon the land is incalculable. Large farms, 

 o\'erwrought and impoverished by overcrop- 

 ping, have been made highly productive .sim- 

 ply by the liberal application of lime. With 

 lime and an abundance of stable manure no 

 farm need be yioor. How important then that 

 nothing should be left to waste about the 

 stalls and the manure pile. Let no fertilizing 

 water escape from the manure heap, for all 

 that is washed away by drenching rain is lost 

 to the farm.* 



For The Lancaster Faumer. 

 J. B. G. et. al. vs. ITALIAN BEES. 



Me. Editor. — In our defense of the ''busy 

 bee," we have chosen the above title and pro- 

 pose to treat the subject in something of a 

 legal form. The plaintiff has laid down his 

 sweeping charges, and asks as the verdict of 

 an intelligent people that the accused shall 

 die, and voluntarily proposes to be the execu- 

 tioner, so far as his locality is concerned. 



Having taken no part in the controversy 

 heretofore, you will allow me to state or re- 

 peat the charge as made by Mr. J. B. G. and 

 others, viz.: "That Italian honey bees do cut 

 the skins of soutid grapes and suck out the 

 liquid portion of the fruit." This is the 

 charge as we understand it, and the question 

 is '■'GuilUj or Not GidH;/.'" We will promise, 

 Mr. Editor, to study briefly, all that the case 

 will admit of, but its great importance de- 

 mands move than a hasty article. 



The products of the honey bee, (and most- 

 ly from tlie Italian variety,) in honey and 

 wax, is estimated at .§20,000,000 per annum in 

 the United States, and the value of bees them- 

 selves much greater. Hence, if innocent of 

 the charge, their destruction would be a pub- 

 lic calamity and a gigantic folly. If guilty of 

 committing oucasiimal depredations, such as 

 complained of, it still remains a question of 

 law, whether the bee-keeper has not rights 

 that a "white man is bound to respect." 



Before introducing testimony for the de- 

 fense, we will cross-question the witness on 

 the stand. 



He says in the November Fakiier, "For 

 over fifcy years I had from five to forty hives 

 of black bees in a season; I then also had lots 

 of grapes, but the bees did not molest the 

 fruit." The above statement being admitted; 

 it follows as a sequence that either a different 

 variety of grape is cultivated, or that the 

 Italian bee is more industrious than blacks, 

 for it is a fact we shall not take time just here 

 to prove, that the physical construction and 

 instincts of black and Italian bees are the 

 same, they diftering only in color and size. If 



'Read before the Lancaster County AgriQlUtural and 

 HortioiUtuvaJ Society by C. L. Hunsecker, 



the black bee can not cut the skin of a perfect 

 grape, neither can the Italian "or the dill'er- 

 ent crosses of that variety. " Their mandibles 

 are the same. 



Again, in the Decembe'r Farmer he says, 

 "Of course I alluded to the Italian variety, 

 and when these cut the skin, the lilack bees 

 will also come and get a share of the sweet 

 juice. Exactly, Mr. G., you admit that their 

 tastes and instincts are the same. This is 

 equivalent to saying that when the skin of 

 the grape is broken, honey bees will sip its 

 juices. This we all admit, but that any kind 

 of hive bees gnaw through the skins of grapes, 

 not knowing what is inside, we must emphati- 

 cally deny, and demand better evidence than 

 the casual observations of one or two wit- 

 nesses, in one or two localities, and in one or 

 two seasons. The counter experiences of 

 thousands of years, and in thousands of locali- 

 ties, cannot be thus ignored with impunity. 

 Even if bees were guilty, as charged, the 

 indiscriminate resort to jwison, suggested, will 

 not bear the test of either moral or economical 

 scrutiny. 



The honey bee has been given us by a wise 

 Providence as one has said, "to gather up and 

 convert to the use of man those scraps and 

 fragments of creation that would otherwise 

 be scattered by the merciless wind or lost on 

 the ambient air;" and we may add, that no 

 creature more fuliy obeys the Divine com- 

 mand to "gather up the fragments that noth- 

 ing be lost." When the cliosen people of 

 God entered the land of promise, aland where 

 milk and honey flowed, the mammoth clusters 

 of Eschol testified to the innocence of honey 

 bees of that time of the charge now made 

 against them. Although many years after 

 the vines of that same land "east their fruit 

 before the time in the field," not from the 

 depredations of bees, but as we are informed, 

 as a punishment for some sin of the people. 

 We do not wish to be understood as in- 

 timating that for some iin of Mr. G. his 

 grapes have "6((.s? their peeling." Our hon- 

 orable and intelligent jury (your numerous 

 readers) will bear with me in bringing evi- 

 lieiice even from remote centuries, 1;o estab- 

 lish the good character of the defendant in 

 this case, for be it remembered that the honey 

 bee is a creature governed by instinct, and not 

 an animal that reasons from cause to effect, 

 and goes on increasing its stock of knowledge 

 for three score years and ten. I have not a 

 doubt but that that antediluvian swarm that 

 had their snow-white combs in the attic of 

 Noah's ark, liuilt the same hexagonal cells that 

 the honey bees have in this year of grace, 

 1877, and that under favorable circumstances 

 they sallied forth in quest of the nectar of 

 flowers. The ancients called the bee "De- 

 borah," or she that blesseth, and truly she 

 has come down through the centuries to us, 

 as a blessing to the cottager and fruit-grower. 

 She goes forth as a blessing to fertilize the fruit 

 blossom, and returns as a blessing with her 

 load of nectar. If the honey bee depredates 

 on fruit this year, she has always done so 

 under like circumstances. That grapes do 

 sometimes burst their skins under certain cli- 

 matic influences, is a matter we think will be 

 denied by no one, just as apples some seasons 

 decay early, as was the case the past autumn. 

 Baldwins and russets, which are usually our 

 longestkeepersin western Pennsylvania, rotted 

 badly before the first of December, but we 

 did not think the bees were to blame for it, 

 though they worked busily upon the piles of 

 rotten apples that were thrown out when- 

 ever the weather would permit them to fly. I 

 am credibly informed that in some of the 

 .south-western counties of this State, where 

 grapes used to flourish, they have rotted so 

 badly that growers have removed thei^' vines, 

 deeming the land more profitable for other 

 purposes of agriculture. 



In this county (Warren) there are but few 

 black bees to be found, but in all parts of the 

 county the Italians are kept, and have been 

 in my locality for the past eleven years; yet 

 the complaint lias never been made of them 

 destroj-ing a single grape. Judging from the 



amount of bees and queens shipped by me to 

 Lancaster county, I infer that the Italian bees 

 of said county must be largely of my strain of 

 that variety. They do not destroy grapes 

 here, and why there V In Erie county, Pa., 

 and the counties of New York and Ohio bor- 

 dering on Lake Erie, large quantities of fine 

 grapes are raised and are not injured by bees, 

 notwithstanding Italian bees are kept" there; 

 in fact, they are the only kind worth keeping. 

 But the charge made by Mr. G. against bees 

 destroying grapes, is not new, farther than 

 confining it to the Italian variety. In 1867 

 .some of the people of Wenham, Mass., waxed 

 very wroth about the busy bee, and asked the 

 "city dads" to expel every bee from the cor- 

 poration. But their wrath subsided from 

 some cause, and Wenham is the home of one 

 of the most extensive Italian queen breeders 

 in the United States. It was the ophiion of 

 some that the skins of the grapes were cut by 

 honey bees, and the opinion of Dr. H. A. 

 Hagen, of Cambridge, Mass., formerly of 

 Konigsberg, Prussia, a learned and distin- 

 guished German entomologist, was asked, who 

 gave it as his opinion that honey bees could 

 not cut the skins of grapes. (See American 

 Bee Journal, vol. 4, page 18.) At Virden, 

 Illinois, in the summer of 1870, bees worked 

 the grapes, and Mr. J. L. Peabody writes : 

 "It was very dry when grapes began to ripen, 

 and a shower of rain cracked open a great 

 many of them. At first it was laid to the 

 Italian bees, but in some places I noticed 

 more blacks than Italians." Under date of 

 March 7, 1871, Mr. H. Nesbit, of Cynthiana, 

 Kentucky, writes : "I have had grupes in my 

 garden for twenty years, hut I never knew the 

 bees to injure the grape. I keep Italian bees. 

 I think tlie troiilile witii Mr. Peabody was in 

 the grapes and not in the bees. It is likely 

 that his grapes had taken the 'grape cholera,' 

 or some other disease, that caused them to 

 burst open, and give the bees admission to 

 the sweets." We will next bring upon the 

 stand, Mr. Charles Dadant, of Hamilton, 

 Illinois, a competent witness in the case, who 

 says he has cultivated bees in a part of France 

 where grapes arc the main crop, near the hills 

 of Burgundy, celebrated for tlie wine pro- 

 duced by tlie cidture of the sugared pineau, 

 a grape richer in sugar than all the American 

 kinds. He declares it a fact well established 

 in that district that Sees are unable to cut the 

 skin of grapes. In order to establish the fact 

 the most juicy and s-ugared grapes, pears, 

 sweet cherries, plums, apricots, etc., were put 

 iniiide the hives (out of the reach of other 

 insects and birds) and never have the bees 

 attacked them if they were not previously 

 scratched. The experiment was repeated 

 again and again, to establish the fact beyond 

 the possibility of a doubt. It was also ascer- 

 tained that the first cutting of the skin of 

 fruits was made by a kind of wasp, or by birds, 

 or caused by rain falling when the fruit was 

 ripe. In Italy the same experiments have led 

 to the same results. (See the 17 years French 

 Journal V AjrieuUenr.) 



We will next call up statistics of the ex- 

 ports of Italy, the home of the Italian bee, 

 from whenee she has been distributed largely 

 through Europe and America, and we find 

 one of her largest exports to be icine. We 

 might multiply our evidence, for we have a 

 very large supply at command, but we deem it 

 quite unnecessary, and fear lest we weary 

 your patience. We think we have established j 

 these facts : || 



1st. By the evidence of Mr. J. B. Gaibcr " 

 and Mi: Peabody, that when the Italian bees 

 work grapes the blacks worki d also. 



2d. By the evidence of Mr. Garber, that 

 black bees have worked upon grapes but one 

 year in fifty. 



'M. By the evidence of Mr. Nesbit, that 

 his Italian bees never disturbed his grapes. 



4tli. By the evidence of Dr. Hagen and 

 Charles Dadent, that honey bees can not cut 

 the .skins of grapes. 



5th. By the above named witnesses that 

 climatic or thermometric influence in con- 



