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PEACHES. 



Sound Fruit is Never Attacked 

 by the Bees. 



Written for the Farin Life. 



The matter has corae up a great 

 many times in regard to bees and 

 peaches, and perhaps more this pi-es- 

 eut season than heretofore. A few 

 da3-s ago a neighbor told me that our 

 bees had taken eomi)lete possession of 

 his peach orchard. They were " clean- 

 ing the fruit right oii' the trees, and 

 would not let anybody go near the 

 ti-ees." I told him they were eating 

 the decayed peaches, and no others. 

 He woukl not believe me until I took 

 him down to our fruit-house and 

 showed him several baskets of sweet 

 cling-stone peaches. These sweet 

 cling-stones are the first that ripen, 

 and this year they began rotting, a 

 great part of them, before they got 

 mellow enough to eat. I have taken 

 considerable time and pains to look 

 into the whole matter, and I think I 

 understand it. 



I bought of a neighbor about two 

 bushels of these peaches, and I imme- 

 diately sorted out all decayed and 

 mellow ones. Before I got through, 

 the bees were busy on the decayed 

 ones, and where the skin was bruised 

 they rapidly enlarged the opening and 

 soon finished the peach. For two or 

 three hours not a bee was to be found 

 on those that had been sorted out as 

 perfect. By noon, however, knots of 

 bees were gathered in difl'ercnt parts 

 of almost every basket. 



I sorted them again, and found little 

 white spots, indicating that rot had 

 commenced since I went over them in 

 the morning, and whenever the bees 

 found these indications that decay had 

 commenced on a small spot, they 

 puslied tlieir tongues into it, and rap- 

 idly made the opening larger. I then 

 placed a part of the peaches indoors, 

 where the bees could not get at them. 

 In about three hours' time, as before, 

 quite a number of the peaches showed 

 decayed spots. Some had commenced 

 to get mellow, but the greater part of 

 them commenced to rot before getting 

 mellow at all. 



Well, wherever they were left out- 

 of-doors the bees found out wliat was 

 going on, and kept going over the 

 peaches, waiting for a soft spot to ap- 

 pear. Before these soft spots ap- 

 peared, a whitish down always indi- 

 cated whei-e rot was going to com- 

 mence. The appearance was some- 

 thing like mildew. 



Good peaches, however, that became 

 mellow before this rotting commenced, 

 were never attacked or injured bj- the 

 bees at all. If, after the peaches get 



mellow, the}' are tumbled around in 

 the baskets so as to bruise the skin, 

 they will be attacked by the bees. 

 They will also, within 24 hours, as a 

 rule, commence to decay if the Ijees do 

 not get at them. 



Now, friends, I think you have the 

 truth of the whole matter. The bees 

 do not injure sound peaches. They 

 will, however, get through the skin at 

 once when this process of decay com- 

 mences, and it will start out through 

 the basket of peaches in just a few 

 hours — that is, if you sort out every 

 decayed peach, and every one that 

 shows any symptoms of decay, at nine 

 o'clock in the morning, during hot, 

 rainy weather, by noon you will find a 

 good many that have commenced to 

 rot — enough so that the bees will get 

 at them. In a few hours more, the 

 peach will sometimes be too rotten for' 

 sale or use. 



Now, I do not know whether this 

 kind of rot always occurs with these 

 sweet cling-stones or not, I have 

 noticed it several seasons, but I never 

 saw it so bad as this season. It com- 

 mences when the peach is nearly ripe, 

 and it may attack fruit before it is 

 mellow, or after it is mellow, or not at 

 all. It is not the same kind of rot that 

 spoils fridt when it rots from over- 

 ripeness. If you get a remedj- for the 

 rot, you will also have a remedy for 

 the bees ; and this kind of rot is cer- 

 tainly a very serious matter to fruit- 

 growers. 



Now, then, there is one other 

 trouble : When your fruit gets bruised 

 so as to break the skin, the bees will 

 rapidly take out the inside. People 

 who handle fruit, however, greatly 

 magnify the efl'ects ; and my neighbor 

 was greatly surprised to see me pick 

 out peaches and push the bees away 

 with my finger, in order to show him 

 the white mold which is the forerun- 

 ner, or harbinger, of the rot on every 

 peach where tlie bees had found an 

 opening. He could hardly believe me 

 when I told him they did not chase 

 his people out of the orchard. 



Now, I wish the whole matter might 

 be fully understood, and I wish our 

 agricultural papers would copy the 

 facts I have here given. There is 

 some trouble with bees and fruit, I am 

 well aware ; but the trouble is not so 

 great as fruit-men often imagine ; and 

 I am sure it will be very much less ex- 

 pense to arrange the damages in an 

 amicable way, rather than to attempt 

 to right the matter by going to law. 



Let the bee-keeper and the fruit- 

 raiser both look into the matter, and 

 talk it over in a friendly way. I pro- 

 posed gatliering the fruit, or paying 

 the damages ; but my neighbor finally 

 declared that there were not sound 

 peaches enough there in the first place 



to he worth talking about. He knew 

 many of them were rotting, even be- 

 fore they were ripe ; but he did not 

 know the bees were at work on the 

 trees, onl}' on tliose that had begun to 

 rot. 



Another tiling : The bees would pay 

 no attention to these peaches, even the 

 sweet ones, were it a .season when 

 honey could be found in the fields. 

 With us, however, the bees seldom find 

 honey enough to keep them busy at 

 the time when peaches begin to ripen. 



October, 1888. 



[When the whole facts are known, 

 the bees will be fullj' exonerated from 

 the charge of attacking sound fruit, as 

 is so well demonstrated in the fore- 

 going article from that excellent agri- 

 cultural periodical called the Farm 

 Life, published at Rochester, N. Y. — 

 Ed.] 



UNITING. 



Use of Cliloruforui in Handling 

 Bees. 



Written for the American Bee Journal 



BY C. E. WOODWAKD. 



On page 742 some one asks if any 

 ill-eft'ects would follow the use of chlo- 

 roform in quieting bees, or introduc- 

 ing queens. As I have never seen any 

 method for its use in the apiary, from 

 our leading apiarists, I will give the 

 method I u.se for uniting colonies and 

 introducing queens. 



In the first place, we must take into 

 consideration the powerful liquid we 

 are to use. Chloroform is a colorless, 

 volatile liquid, and is very powerful 

 for man or beast, and should not be 

 allowed in the hands of any child. 



Get the chloroform and three 

 sponges, and saturate one of the 

 sponges with the liquid ; dampen a 

 sponge with water, and put the sponge 

 into tlie bee-smoker ; then put in the 

 sponge saturated with the chloroform, 

 and then put in the third sponge. Be 

 siire that you have the sponge satur- 

 ated with the chloroform between the 

 two sponges dampened with water. 

 This will hold the strength of the 

 chloroform. 



Wet a cloth with water and cover 

 over the frames of the hive that is to 

 be manipulated, and cover the hive up 

 again. Now take the smoker and 

 give the bees two puffs of the chloro- 

 form. Then go to the next hive and 

 operate on it as before. If you are 

 uniting bees, then go back to the first 

 hive and give them two puffs more. 

 By this time the bees will lie "silly," 



