The Canadian Horticl'lturist. 



389 



BEES AND C.KAI'HS. 



i\.. ML'1\I\A\' : On the question of the bees puncturing 

 and destnjying grapes, I may state that I have been 

 twenty-five years in the bee business, and that I can keep 

 my bees as near my grapes as I am to these gentlemen 

 here, which is about four feet, and they do not harm 

 the grapes. I have read a great deal on the subject, 

 and watched closely, and I would say that the gentleman 

 makes in his paper one statement that contradicts his own assertion. He says 

 the bees take the grapes and suck out the juices until there is nothing left but 

 the skin, in which there is a little round hole. It is not the bees but the yellow 

 jackets that make those punctures and cut those little round holes. I have fre- 

 quently found that to be the case. It is well-known by those who understand this 

 question that the yellow jackets do this. The yellow jacket makes that puncture, 

 and then the bees, after the grape .is cracked or punctured, either by the yellow 

 jackets, or in any other way, pitch in for their share of the juices. But that 

 does not occur until after the skin is broken. That is what has given the 

 gentleman the impression that the bees did it. But the fact that that little 

 round hole was left there proves to me that the jellow jackets made it, not the 

 bees. 



Mr. Wilcox : I believe that it has been well established that the honey 

 bee cannot puncture the skin, or the little film or inner skin that surrounds 

 the grape. This has been demonstrated in our Society by overwhelming 

 evidence. 



Mr. Cutler : I will state that when the material for honey was very 

 scarce last summer, the bees came and settled in swarms upon my raspberry 

 bushes so thickly that a lady could not go in there and pick the fruit. I know 

 that they punctured the cuticle of the raspberry. They did not touch my grapes, 

 although they were within two rods of my bee hives. 



Mr. AVii.cox : I will state the experiments of Prof. McLean, in which he 

 confined colonies of bees in a glass house and took their food away from them, 

 so as to bring them to a starving condition, and hung bunches of grapes of 

 different varieties around inside the house, and even hung bunches of grapes 

 inside of the hives, and kept them so confined until the bees died of starvation. 

 There was not a single grape injured by them. But as soon as the grape was 

 punctured, even with a needle, so as to penetrate the epidermis, then they 

 went in and cleaned them out entirely. That is the entire basis of these charges 

 against the honey bees. It has been my experience that whenever any bird or 

 insect once punctures the skin of a grape, then the bees take possession and 

 clean out the grape. But they have no biter by which they can penetrate the 



