220 



EXPERIMENT STATION. 



[Jan. 



Strange to say, the enclosed area bore al)ont lialf as large a crop, 

 per rod, as the surrounding bog. This result appears to contra- 

 dict partially the results obtained in 1911, and for this reason 

 it is planned to repeat the experiment again in 1913. A few 

 small, solitary bees, or even honey bees or bumblebees, may 

 have worked their way through the netting without being ob- 

 served and visited a part of the blossoms. 



The plot from which bees were excluded in 1911 has in all 

 other respects always been treated like the surrounding bog. It 

 is therefore of sj^ecial interest to note that in 1912 this plot bore 

 over twice as large a crop per square rod as the average of the 

 rest of the bog, and a considerably larger one than any other 

 equal area on the bog, the fertilizer and fungus plots included. 

 In 1911 this area bore a very light crop in comparison with 

 the rest of the bog. This seems to show that the after effects 

 of light or heavy cropping often appear the following season. 

 It is very desirable to determine to what extent this is true, 

 for if it can be established that snch effects generally do appear 

 in the crop of the succee<ling season, it must have a strong bear- 

 ing on the management of cranberry bogs in more than one 

 respect. If these effects are carried over, the apparent im- 

 portance of keeping bees to insure good blossom fertilization is, 

 in general, much reduced, for what a bog fails to produce in 

 years of bee scarcity, on account of poor fertilization, it will 

 tend to make up in years of bee abundance. 



The keeping quality of the berries from this 1911 plot was 

 tested, in comparison with the berries from some of the fer- 

 tilizer plots. The results of the test were as follows : — 



