THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



331 



bell around the houey-sac. The seed- 

 vessel remains closed. Several days 

 later, when the pollen is dead, the 

 seed-vessel opens and receives pollen 

 from other flowers. In the daisy, one 

 head has many flowers. The outer 

 white leaves serve as an attraction 

 and resting-place, and produce no 

 pollen. Inner flowers have pollen- 

 vessels in the form of a hollow tube, 

 into the middle of which the pollen 

 falls, and is pushed up and into view 

 by the tip of the seed-vessel. After- 

 ward, when the seed-vessel is full 

 grown, and most of the pollen has 

 been brushed off, the top opens and 

 exposes the inner face to the seed- 

 vessel to pollen brought from other 

 plants. 



In a common garden-bean, the 

 stamens shed pollen on the middle of 

 the style. One of the flower leaves is 

 wound into a tube containing both 

 stamens and style. These remain in- 

 side the leaf until a bee alights on the 

 wing petals, then its weight presses 

 down the blossom, and flrst the end 

 of the style touches the bee and it 

 gets any pollen which it has brought 

 from the last-visited flower ; next the 

 style sticks out stiU further, and the 

 pollen on its middle hits the same 

 spot and prepares the bee for the next 

 flower. 



In the lady-slipper the honey-sac is 

 at the bottom of the slipper. The bee 

 enters the large slit on the upper side 

 of the slipper. Edges are inflexed so 

 that the bee cannot creep out the 

 same way. There are two small holes 

 near the stalk through which it can 

 get out. In doing so it must brush 

 against the seed-vessel and pollen- 

 masses. If the pollen-masses were 

 first, the plant would be self- fertilized, 

 but in fact the seed-vessel comes first 

 and pollen is carried off to be left on 

 the stigma of the next flower it enters. 



Orchids have a sticky material that 

 will set at once ; as soon as the in- 

 sect's head touches it, the honey is 

 free in the sac. When the sticky 

 material requires more time to 

 harden, the honey-sac is empty and 

 the honey is contained in the lining 

 of the sac, and the bee has to bore 

 through the wall of this lining in sev- 

 eral places before it can get all the 

 honey. 



Bees have habits which help cross- 

 fertilization. They work on flowers 

 of one kind as long as they can before 

 changing to another kind. This is 

 not to help the plant, but because 

 they have learned how to stand and 

 work better. Bees search for honey 

 by instinct, by experience, since they 

 work as soon as they emerge from the 

 pupa state. They search introduced 

 plants as readily as native flowers 

 which do not secrete honey, and often 

 try to suck honey out of the honey- 

 sacs that are too long for them to 

 reach. Bees cannot tell without en- 

 tering a flower whether other bees 

 have exhausted the honey, and hence 

 the flower is more perfectly cross- 

 fertilized. Mr. Miller found that in a 

 certain set of blossoms visited by a 

 bumble-bee, four-bfths had been pre- 

 viously visited. 



The great number of flowers which 

 bees can visit in a short time greatly 



increases the chances of any given 

 flower being cross-fertilized. In one 

 minute a bumble-bee visited 24 of the 

 closed flowers of flax. In 15 minutes 

 a single flower on the summit of a 

 plant of evening primrose was visited 

 eight times by various bees. In 1!) 

 minutes every flower on a certain 

 flowering plant was visited twice. In 

 one minute six flowers of a harebell 

 were entered by a pollen-collecting 

 bee, for when collecting pollen they 

 work more slowly than when collect- 

 ing honey. It was estimated at one 

 time that the flowers in a certain 

 flower-bed were each visited 30 times 

 daily during the week or more that 

 they were in blossom. Bumble-bees 

 in collecting honey fly at the rate of 

 ten miles an hour. 



Bees have other habits which are 

 directly opposed to cross-fertilization. 

 In flowers having several honey-sacs, 

 if a bee finds the first one it searches 

 is empty, it does not wait to search 

 the others. Bees often get the honey 

 by biting holes in the blossoms and 

 sucking it out of the side. Whole 

 fields of red clover have been ex- 

 amined in which every flower was 

 thus bitten. The biting is done by 

 bumble-bees, and then hive-bees suck 

 through the holes. Bees are very suc- 

 cessful in thus biting holes, always 

 hitting the spot outside just over the 

 honey-sac. In all such cases the 

 plant is not fertilized. 



The facts are that plants are very 

 thoroughly fertilized by insects. A 

 gentleman marked 310 plants which 

 were incapable of self-fertilization, 

 and carefully put pollen on the 

 stigmas of each day after day ; he left 

 an equal number to the insects. His 

 produced 11,237 seeds, and the bees 

 10,886, a difference of but one in 35, 

 and this difference is fully made up 

 by the fact that he worked during a 

 cold spell with continued rain, when 

 the bees did not. Of white clover, 10 

 heads unprotected gave nearly ten 

 times as many seeds as 10 heads cot- 

 ered with gauze ; 20 heads covered 

 produced only one poor seed, and 20 

 heads open gave 2,290 seeds. Of red 

 clover, 100 heads covered gave noth- 

 ing, and 100 heads open produced 

 2,720 seeds. Insects will abundantly 

 cross-fertilize plaMts growing one- 

 third to one-halt mile apart. 



In the tfnited States, hive-bees 

 never suck red clover. In England 

 they only suck it through holes made 

 by bumble-bees. The clover cannot 

 be fertilized by the hive-bee— it is too 

 small— but it is cross-fertilized by the 

 bumble-bee. Hence one gentleman 

 has made this statement : The safety 

 of England depends on the number of 

 cats she keeps. He proves his prop- 

 osition thus : Without the aid of 

 bumble-bees the red clover could not 

 be fertilized. Bumble-bees make 

 their nests on the ground, where they 

 are the prey of mice. Cats destroy 

 the mice and give the bees a chance 

 to live. Hence he reasons, no cats, 

 many mice; many mice, no bumble- 

 bees ; no bees, no clover ; no clover, 

 no cattle ; no cattle, no beef ; and 

 without beef where would the En- 

 glishman be y 



University of Vermont. 



Local Coavention Directory. 



t8S7. Timeandptaceof Meeting. 



May 27.— Darke County Dnion. at Greenville. O. 

 J. A. Koe, ASBt. sec., Union City, Ind. 



Dec. 7-9.-Michit:an State, at East Saginaw, Mich. 

 H. D. Cutting, Sec, Clinton, Mich. 



^~ In order to have this table complete. Secre- 

 taries are requesttid to forward full particuhirs of 

 time and place of future meetings.— Ed. 



s^hSSI&'^M&^M 



Discusssion on Marketing Honey. 



—Dr. C. C. Miller, Marengo, 5 His., 

 writes thus on May 17, 1887 : 



Fbibnd Kewman :— In reply to 

 your suggestion on page 275, the mat- 

 ters mentioned for discussion are 

 certainly important, and have awak- 

 ened so much interest, that in the ab- 

 sence of any objection we may con- 

 sider it settled that they will be taken 

 up for discussion at the convention of 

 the North American Bee-Keepers' 

 Society at Chicago, next fall.— C. C. 



MiLLEK. 



[This settles it then, that at the 

 next meeting of the North American 

 Bee-Keepers' Society at Chicago, 

 there will be a full discussion of these 

 topics, viz : " The cost of production, 

 prices at which honey can be sold at 

 a profit, methods of putting up honsy, 

 commission men, cash buyers, home 

 markets, city markets, foreign mar- 

 kets, development of markets, dis- 

 tribution of our products, associa- 

 tions, corners, etc." Let all prepare 

 to exhaust the subject.— Ed.] 



White Clover in Bloom.— Wm. 



Robson, Rolla,OMo., on May 10, 1887, 

 says: 



White clover is beginning to make 

 pastures look white. We have plenty 

 of rain now, and bees are tumbling 

 over each other in their work. 



Bee-Keeping in Florida.— Dr. Jesse 

 Oren, La Porte City,o Iowa, on May 



12, 1887, writes : 



I would say in regard to Mr. O. O. 

 Poppleton'sbees, that he had but one 

 colony left on March 30. But his loss 

 was a gain I How ? In this way : 

 Mr. Sheldon, of New Smyrna, Fla., 

 gave him 100 colonies with honey 

 enough to carry the bees over the 

 summer of 1887 ! Mr. Poppleton is to 

 return the colonies at the end of the 

 year, Mr. P. to get all the proceeds, 

 whatever that may be. Now, as Mr. 

 Sheldon has furnished all needed 

 honey to feed, Mr. P. will utilize all 

 his combs and be ready for next year's 

 mangrove bloom, if nature brings 

 them out. Florida is no hee-State 

 like Illinois and Iowa — but is a poor 

 State for bees. 



