AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



209 



but it took them over a week. Can Prof. 

 (~ook say what they were ? 



I was rather amused by an editorial in 

 Hu/nc and Farm a few weeks ago, in 

 which it was claimed that an apiary, well 

 maiiaged, could be made to yield an 

 average of SI 35 per colony. But when 

 his correspondents began to write letters 

 expressing doubts, the editor said it was 

 a mistake, that lie meant to say that a 

 good colony could be made to yield $35. 

 To do this, at 7 cents per pound, there 

 would have to be 500 pounds of extracted 

 honey, which, I think, is very rarely 

 obtained from a single colony. 



When, however, Mr. Pelham, of Mays- 

 ville, Ky., stated that he had made a 

 specialty of bees for 20 years, and that 

 for the first ten years he had an average 

 of $7.26 per colony, and for the next 

 10. ending with 1890, the average was 

 •S-i.il, the editor thought this was a 

 very small yield, on an average. I think, 

 however, that few have done much 

 better, for that length of time. 



The demand for honey at present is 

 i-^reater than the supply. 



Round Rock, Tex., July 29, 1891. 



How tlie Bees Act Willi Frnit, 



X. WILSOX. 



I have been keeping bees alongside of 

 my fruit orchard for 12 years. I grow 

 peaches, prunes, apples, almonds, pears, 

 oranges, lemons, limes and olives. All of 

 my fruit commands tip top prices when 

 put on the i^iarket, and none of my cus- 

 tomers have complained that the fruit 

 was injured or hurt by my bees. I find 

 that wasps, yellow-jackets and birds will 

 pick holes in most kinds of fruit and the 

 bees svill follow them as soon as fermen- 

 tation commences in the injured fruit, 

 and very often where fruit is injured and 

 over-ripe the bees utilize most of it, some- 

 times taking all but the pit and skin. 

 But I am glad they can utilize it, for 

 decayed and injured fruit ought not to 

 be put on sale by anybody. 



The honey produced by my bees, is 

 worth more gold coin than my fruit crop, 

 and I believe in getting all one can out 

 of any industry, and letting the best 

 survive. So I say go in little bee, get 

 what you can and after awhile we will 

 divide profits. I want both fruit and 

 bees ; they seem to fit Jn together so 

 nicely. But many fruit-growers seem to 

 think it the great mission of their lives 

 to fight and quarrel with the busy bee, 



and they goto such lengths sometimes as 

 to kill the bees. 



We heard of a fruit-grower not many 

 miles from Los Angeles who hired a man 

 at $2 a day and board to work a plank 

 bee-trap during^the Summer, who boasted 

 tBat his man could crush two bushels of 

 bees in a day with his plank trap. Yet 

 the society to prevent cruelty to animals 

 never looked after the matter. Since 

 then that man has had scale bugs on his 

 trees until life was a weariness to him, 

 and we believe he has a few with him yet! 



We find in our exchanges many articles 

 touching the ability of the bees to punc- 

 ture fruit : others again produce the 

 testimony of official scientists, who 

 declare that the bee cannot and does not 

 injure sound fruit of any kind ; that it is 

 of great benefit to the orchardists by 

 reason of its carrying pollen and distri- 

 buting it among the bloom of fruit trees 

 at the proper season, fructifying what 

 would, without their aid, prove barren 

 and useless bloom. 



The gardeners never complain of bees 

 — in fact most of them recognize the 

 bee as a very useful friend. An exchange 

 furnishes an exhaustive, unanswerable 

 article on behalf of the bee that ought to 

 settle the question beyond the realm of 

 controversy : 



In a recent issue of the Hanford 

 Sentinel, G. W. Camp gives the following 

 regarding the ever-recurring question, 

 " Do bees injure fruit :" Mr. Oliver Smith 

 informed me that the bees carried off a 

 tray of raisins per day from his vineyard. 

 He did not say whether they brought 

 the trays back or not, but two of his 

 neighbors told me that they saw the road 

 near his place covered with bees carrying 

 off his raisins. The bees were walking 

 on their hind legs and each one had a 

 raisin between its fore claws, and this is 

 given as proof that they are enemies of 

 the fruit-growers. 



Should any one who says bees bite the 

 raisins take the pains to examine a bee, 

 while feeding, with a microscope, he 

 will be surprised to learn that a bee has 

 no biter, but lias only a slender and a 

 limber proboscis, that is as small as our 

 finest needle, and through the hollow of 

 this proboscis it can only take liquid 

 food, and through it all the honey gath- 

 ered has to pass. Will bees injure 

 rasins ? is the question. I say they will 

 not. I know there are many who dis- 

 pute this, and claim they have seen 

 grapes eaten by them. 



Those who make this assertion are only 

 making a very common mistake, for if 

 the skin of the grape is broken before 

 the grape is dry. the juice of the grape 



