232 



THE APPLE 



hand, it is now thoroughly established by experience (and it con- 

 forms to common sense too) that there is a great and ruinous 

 danger to bees from spraying an apple orchard at a time when a 

 cover crop of clover under the trees is in bloom, whether the trees 

 are in bloom or not. Of course the spray falls down into the 

 clover, and clover blossoms have just the right funnel arrangement 

 to concentrate the poison. In considerable parts of Colorado the 



Bees and the orchard 



An orchard in full bloom, predicting, if nature wills, a full crop of the choicest of fruits. 

 At this period spraying may do injury to bees and other insects 



beekeepers have had to move their bees away from the neighbor- 

 hood of orchards, far enough to be beyond a bee's ordinary flight ; 

 those who stayed by the orchards have lost almost all their stock 

 of bees ; and this was not on account of spraying while in bloom 

 (which is now prohibited by law in Colorado) but on account of 

 spraying when the clover under the trees was in bloom. 



The spraying appears to kill not only the bees that visit the 

 flowers but also the larval bees in the hive, to which the poisoned 

 honey is carried back. One might easily stir up a scare about 



