THE GRAPE IN KANSAS. 119 



oozing from the puncture. Many erroneously suppose that bees sting the grapes. 

 Bees never sting excepting in self-defense or in defense of their homes from real 

 or imaginary danger. 



At times when bees could gather nothing in the fields, we saturated clusters 

 of grapes with honey and suspended them in front of the hives in the apiary, and 

 from branches of trees and grape-vines near by. Other clusters, dipped in honey 

 and syrup, were hung in the house. The bees thronged upon the grapes until 

 the clusters looked like little swarms hanging to the vines and limbs. They 

 lapped the grapes until the skins were polished perfectly smooth and shining, 

 like the inside skin of an onion, and no taste of sweet could be detected by touch- 

 ing the tongue to the grape. The skins of the grapes were left intact. 



Bees, like some animals of higher order, seem to enjoy stolen sweets better 

 than any other. Taking advantage of their propensity to steal and despoil, we 

 placed combs containing honey in an unoccupied hive, and permitted the bees in 

 the apiary to steal the honey and such portions of the comb as they could appro- 

 priate. We then suspended, instead of the despoiled combs, clusters of grapes 

 dipped in honey. The bees attacked with desperate earnestness, apparently 

 determined to literally go through those grapes. The clusters were left hanging 

 for a day or two, until the bees had entirely deserted the hive, and examination 

 showed the grapes to be as sound as when placed there, and the skins polished 

 smooth and clean as before. We then punctured the grapes of several clusters, 

 by passing a darning-needle through the fruit from side to side, and hung them 

 in the house near the hungry bees. They sucked the juice from the broken seg- 

 ments as far as they could insert their tongues into the wound, leaving a depres- 

 sion near the puncture, and the remainder of the pulp was left whole. 



The instinct of bees impels them to remove everything useless or strange from 

 their hives. They will labor harder to remove any object which is useless or 

 offensive than for any other purpose. After passing a darning-needle through 

 some of the grapes in several clusters of different varieties, we suspended those 

 clusters from the top of comb frames by using fine wire, and placed them in the 

 center of strong colonies of both hybrids and Italians. The juice was extracted 

 from the punctured segments as before, and the perfect grapes hung undisturbed 

 for fifteen days. They appeared to have kept better hanging in the hive than 

 they would have kept on the vines. 



The evidence then shows that bees do not injure perfect fruit. We have ob- 

 served that they give no attention to the puncture and blight caused by the 

 ovipositing of other insects until after the larvae have hatched and decay has set 

 in, and then only in cases of extremity. The circumstances under which bees 

 appear to be able to injure grapes are very exceptional. That they will not mo- 

 lest or even visit grapes when it is possible to obtain forage elsewhere is certain. 

 It also appears certain that they never attempt violence to the skin of grapes. 



The capacity of bees to injure overripe grapes is limited by the extent to which 

 the juice and pulp are exposed by the bursting of the film. If the film is only 

 slightly burst, the bees can do but little injury. If the progress of decay has 

 caused a wide rupture in the film, the bees more readily appropriate the juice. 

 If overripeness and decay have exposed the pulp of grapes to such an extent that 

 bees can damage them seriously, the bees should be confined to the hive (unless 

 the weather is excessively hot), and the grapes should be at once gathered, for, 

 from this stage, the progress of decay is rapid. Confinement to the hive for a 

 short time, while the overripe grapes are being gathered, would result in no loss, 

 and the bees would be prevented from gathering the juice and storing it in the 

 hive. Bees confined to their hives in warm weather must always have ample top 



