254 Valuable Honey Plants. 



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. Still, Dr. C V. Eiley 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, it is certainly of rare occur- 

 rence, and is more than compensated by the great aid which 

 the bees afford the fruit-grower in the great work of cross-fer- 

 tilization, which is imperatively necessary to his success, as 

 has been so well shown by Dr. Asa Gray and Mr. Chas. Dar- 

 win. It is true that cross-fertilization of the flowers, which 

 can only be accomplished by insects, and early in the season 

 by the honey-bee, 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 or male element, are on one plant, and the pistils that 

 grow the ovules — the female element — on another. Here, 

 then, insects must act as "marriage priests" that fructification 

 may be accomplished at all. In other plants where the organs 

 are all in the same flower, fertilization is wholly dependent on 

 insects. In cases like the red clover, where fertilization is 

 possible without aid, my coUeague, Prof. Beal, has shown 

 that unless insects are present, the yield of seed is meager in- 

 deed. The seeds in the uncovered blossoms were to those in 

 the covered as 236:5. There is then entire reciprocity between 

 the bees and flowers. The bees are as necessary to the plants 

 as are the plants to the bees. I am informed by Prof. W. 

 W. Tracy, that the gardeners in the vicinity of Boston keep 

 bees that they may perform this duty. Even then, if Mr. 

 Bidwell and Prof. Ililey are right, and the bee does, rarely — 

 for surely this is very rare, if ever— destroy grapes, still they 

 are, beyond any possible question, invaluable aids to the pomol- 

 ogist. That bees ever injure blossoms and thus effect damage 

 to the fruitage of such plants as buckwheat — or to any plants, 

 as is sometimes claimed — is utterly absurd and without foun- 

 dation. 



But the principal source of honey is still from the flowers. 



WHAT AEE THE VALUABLE HONEY PLANTS? 



In the northeastern part of our country the chief reliance, 

 for May, is the fruit-blossoms, willows, and sugar maples. In 



