408 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



June 27, 



BEES AND STRAWBERRIES. 



A Short Symposium on the Question Whether 

 Bees Work on Strawberry Blossoms. 



Tlie question whether bees work ou strawberry bloom has 

 lately received considerable attention in the American Bee 

 Journal. The testimony seems to be almost unanimously in 

 tlie negative. Now I think it is time this tune was varied 

 somewhat. For a number of years I have been engaged in 

 both the bee and fruit business, and there has been not less 

 than a hundred acres of strawberry fields within bee-range of 

 my apiary each year. I have given close attention to the 

 honey-sources of this locality, and I am sure the strawberry 

 Is one of the Important honey-plants. It blooms just at the 

 time to bridge the gap between the general crop of fruit-bloom 

 and the raspberry and alfalfa. The bees not only work on 

 this bloom eagerly, but they get enough nectar to keep breed- 

 ing up to a vigorous rate. Go into the strawberry fields at 

 any time when the bees are flying during the blooming season, 

 and the hum of busy wings sounds like a swarm might be on 

 the wing. There must be something the matter with the bees 

 or the berry plants, or both, in the East. Brethren, you had 

 better come out here where the strawberry gives both nectar 

 and fruit in abundance, and the bees know a good thing when 

 they see it. 



Bees are doing splendidly — just beginning on the alfalfa. 

 Canon City, Colo., June 10. L. J. Tbmplin. 



I have been much interested in the controversy among 

 Messrs. Secor, Abbott, Miller, and others, in regard to bees 

 working on strawberry blossoms. I am a bee-keeper on a 

 small scale, and working for a horticulturist of 30 years' ex- 

 perience with this question — one who raises from 900 to 

 l,-±00 bushels a year, or from 7 to 12 acres. James Burr is 

 his name. He says that bees do work ou strawberries very 

 strong some seasons : other years not at all. My bees, this 

 spring, have just swarmed over the blossoms, and gathered 

 both pollen and honey. They worked as strong as they would 

 on apple-blossoms, even before fruit-blossoms, or more strictly 

 speaking, apple-blossoms, fell. Two years ago they did the 

 same. In some seasons they do not seem to notice them much. 



Mr. Secor is right in regard to the staminate plants bear- 

 ing fruit. Frank P. Stowe. 



Monroe, Conn. 



I have read Mr. Secor's article about bees and strawber- 

 ries. He may be right; I don't dispute him at all, as he is In 

 Iowa and I in Utah, but my bees claim a right to ray straw- 

 berry patch, and when I went to see them they drove me out. 



The prospect for honey this year is looking fair, and I 

 hope it will turn out as it looks, as for several years the crop 

 has been poor. The white clover is blossoming nicely, and the 

 lucerne is beginning to bloom. 



I have noticed that some writers have written consider- 

 able about sweet clover as hay, and also as a honey-plant. 

 Bees seem to like it better than live stock in this country. 

 Lucerne is the dryland hay. It is finer than sweet clover, and 

 is a perennial. Sweet clover is strictly a biennial ; if you cut 

 it for hay you will be obliged to cut it before it blooms, or it 

 will be too hard and woody, hence it would do your bees no 

 good, and be gone in two years. Lucerne doesn't treat you 

 iji that way. You can cut it as often as you want to, and the 

 root is still there. Wm. C. Ashbv. 



Wood's Cross, Utah, June 1. 



I have read with interest the discussion, not to say con- 

 troversy, going on in the American Bee Journal, between 

 Messrs. Emerson T. Abbott and Eugene Secor, in regard to 

 bees working on strawberry bloom. Mr. Abbott takes the 

 ground that bees do work on strawberries ; while Mr. Secor 

 maintains that they do 7iof, and brings in considerable evi- 

 dence (that is, negative evidence) to prove his position. 



Now both these gentilemen are too well known for any- 

 body to suppose that they are discussing the question for any 

 other purpose than to get at the real facts in the case. If I 

 am not mistaken, Mr. Abbott has brought no positive evidence 

 to prove that bees do work on strawberries, nor has Mr. Secor 

 brought any positive evidence that they do not. True, Mr. 

 Secor has the statements of several gentlemen who raise 

 strawberries, and keep bees also, that they have never seen 

 the bees working on the strawberries. Mr. Secor, I believe, is 

 a lawyer, and knows the difference between positive and neg- 

 ative evidence. If he were defending a man charged with 

 crime, he certainly would not expect to clear him by bringing 



even a dozen men to swear that. they did not see him doit, 

 when one man had sworn that he did see him do it. 



Well, now, I was much surprised to hear anybody say 

 they had never seen bees working on strawberries. I have 

 raised strawberries several years, and also kept bees ten or 

 more years, and I have seen the bees on the strawberry bloom 

 more or less every year. Some years they work on them but 

 little — presumably because there is something else better ; but 

 this year. In particular, the strawberries were one mass of 

 bloom, and they were alive with bees. My strawberries are 

 the Warfield, fertilized with Michael's Early, and I noticed 

 that they visited the flowers of both varieties, which leads me 

 to think they both sought and found honey as well as pollen. 



I have had no opportunity for seeing them on blackber- 

 ries, but they work on raspberries — all varieties — the red rasp- 

 berry producing a most delightful honey ; also op gooseberries 

 and currants. . S. H. Hekkick. 



Rockford, 111. 



My experience with bees working on strawberries tallies 

 with that of Hon. Eugene Secor. As he calls for facts instead 

 of theory, I will give a fact which came under my observation. 



About six years ago I came to this city (Franklin, Pa.), 

 at that time as foreman in the large market gardens and 

 greenhouses of C. A. Rollo. It was shortly after the holidays 

 when I entered his employ, and during a conversation with 

 my employer a short time after this I told him he ought to 

 keep a few colonies of bees for the benefit of his strawberries. 

 I explained to him the great value of the bee to the blossoms, 

 and the utter inability of fruit to set without their aid, laying 

 particular stress on strawberries, and that, too, with the ut- 

 most confidence that I was right. I saw I was making an im- 

 pression, and kept the good work up by telling him I was able 

 to handle bees. The outcome of it was that he took me with 

 him one fine spring day to an apiary to select some good colo- 

 nies of bees. We got five, and set them by the fence at one 

 end of the strawberry patch. 



I never saw strawberries bloom more profusely, and al- 

 though I was over the field every hour of the day, and my em- 

 ployer was simply attention itself, I don't believe we saw two 

 dozen bees at work on the blossoms all the time they were in 

 bloom. When my employer called on me for an explanation I 

 told him that I thought the atmospheric conditions were not 

 right for secreting nectar to entice the bees to the blossoms, 

 and that his strawberries would doubtless be a failure; but a 

 greater yield of strawberries has never been my good fortune 

 to see — large, fine, and delicious ! In the face of such evi- 

 dence, I had to let ray pet theory go, and the overthrowal cost 

 me no little, either. It was humiliating to have asserted facts 

 prove groundless. While I never wished anybody hard luck, 

 I believe It would have been some sort of a satisfaction to me, 

 at the time, to have seen those strawberries prove a failure. 



I think that Mr. Secor, and some others who have taken 

 exception to Emerson T. Abbott's statement about rows of 

 staminate plants, have failed to take Mr. Abbott as he meant. 

 It is a fact that all varieties of strawberries produce both 

 staminate and pistilate plants, but never are both kinds of 

 blossoms on the sarae plant; each plant must either be stamen 

 or pistil : and the runner from the staminate plant will grow 

 only stamen, and from the pistilate plant only pistil. And as 

 the plants are generally selected and set out promiscuously, 

 there are usually enough staminate plants scattered promis- 

 cuously over the patch, but it is an easy matter when cutting 

 the runners to keep this kind by themselves, and plant thera 

 in rows by themselves, if so desired. 



Mr. Secor seems to question that there is any scarcity of 

 strawberries that produce only one kind of plants. How 

 about the Crescent, which produces only pistilate, and cannot 

 be grown true to seed, out only from runners ? Can it be kept 

 up ? and it is only a matter of a short time when it will have 

 become so devitalized that it cannot be profitably grown. In- 

 stead of the Crescent being a " freak," as many suppose, it is 

 the result of the promulgator,cutting runners from the pistilate 

 plants, and none from the staminate. 



I am here going to question the use of staminate plants 

 for the production of strawberries. We know that bees sel- 

 dom heed thera at all, and other insects are very scarce at 

 this time of the year, and any one who has carefully examined 

 a strawberry blossom, and the nature of the pollen, must have 

 come to the conclusion that it was never made for a wind- 

 fertilizer. I don't believe that more than one strawberry in a 

 hundred is ever fertilized at all. If you wish to ascertain the 

 extent of fertilization in strawberries, just select a number of 

 nice, large, dead-ripe berries, plant them, and see how many 

 will grow from the seed. You will find that 99 out of 100 

 will rot in the ground. 



Now to prove that these were not fertilized, just take a 



