Bees and Grapes. 337 
from the maple and other trees and plants also furnishes 
them sweets. They gather juices of questionable repute 
from about cider mills, some from grapes and other fruit 
which have been crushed or eaten and torn by wasps and 
* other insects. That bees ever tear the grapes is a question of 
which I have failed to receive any personal proof, though for 
years I have been carefully seeking it. I have lived among 
the vineyards of California, and have often watched bees 
about vines in Michigan, but never saw bees tear open 
the grapes. I have laid crushed grapes in the apiary, when 
the bees were not gathering, and were ravenous for stores, 
which, when covered with sipping bees, were replaced with 
sound grape-clusters, which in no instance were mutilated, 
I have even shut bees in empty hives on warm days and 
closed the entrance with grape-clusters, which even then 
were not cut. I have thus been led to doubt if bees ever 
attack sound grapes; though quick to improve the oppor- 
tunities which the oriole’s beak and the stronger jaws of 
wasps offer them. My friend, Prof. Prentiss, suggests 
that when the weather is very warm and damp, and. the 
grapes very ripe, the juice may ooze through small open- 
ings of the grapes and so attract the bees. It is at just 
such times that attacks are observed. I feel very certain 
that bees never attack sound grapes. I judge not only 
from observation and inquiry, but from the habits of the 
bee. Bees never bore for nectar but, seek, or even know 
only of that which is fully exposed, Still, Dr. C. V. 
Riley feels sure that bees are sometimes thus guilty, and 
Mr. Bidwell tells me he has seen bees rend sound grapes, 
which they did with their feet. Yet, if this is the case, 2? 
is certainly of rare occurrence, and is more than compen- 
sated by the great aid which the bees afford the fruit- 
grower in the great work of cross-fertilization, which is 
imperatively necessary to his success, as has been so well 
shown by Dr. Asa Gray and Mr. Chas. Darwin. It is 
true that cross-fertilization of the flowers, which can only 
be accomplished by insects, and early in the season by the 
honey-l @2, is often, if not always, necessary to a full yield 
of fruit and vegetables. In diecious plants, like the willows 
and most nut-bearing trees, the stamens that bear the pollen 
