102 A Modern Bee-Farm 
Pruning Fruit Trees. 
Bush, pyramid and standard fruit trees require the excess 
of branches removed rather than any systematic pruning, 
which is generally understood to mean cutting back the 
tips of the shoots. 
This latter plan should be avoided so far as possible 
until the young trees are well developed, and only when 
the dwarf trees are beginning to crowd each other. If, 
then, about two-thirds of the current year’s shoots are cut 
back in November, they will be found to set fruit buds 
instead of continuing to grow wood. 
Some of the upper shoots should still be allowed 
to grow in a manner that they will not become crowded. 
If too many spurs form where the shoots are set back, 
these must be thinned out when pruning the following 
year. 
Where a tree sets too many fruit buds at the expense of 
growth, these should be nearly all removed for at least 
one season, leaving only the leaf buds, when the tree will 
rapidly recover if well nourished. 
The growth of too much wood is sometimes checked by 
digging down to the roots and cutting through some of the 
stronger ones, when finer rootlets will be thrown out and 
the tree become more fruitful. Anything that checks 
the too rapid preduction of wood will tend to induce 
fruitfulness. 
For instance, if the bark is injured short of destroying a 
tree that has not been fruitful, it will be found to crop 
heavily thereafter. It has been shown that barren trees, 
after being shot in the main stem, will in like manner bear 
abundance of fruit; but of course this is only an example, 
and not by any means a process to follow. 
Some trees may be “ hide-bound,” and will immediately 
take a new lease of life if the bark is slit in a vertical line. 
