BENEFICIAL INSECTS 



241 



direction of lier fliglit. She will make a bee line toward the hive, 

 or bee tree, from which she came. A little flour dusted over the bee 

 will make it easier to follow her flight. In this way bee hunters 

 locate bee trees in the woods. A bee line is obtained at one 

 position ; the hunter then moves to a new position some distance 

 to the right or left of his first stand and gets another bee line. 

 The bee tree will be found where the two lines intersect. In tracing 

 bees from red clover, if they can find any such there, let some of the 

 class dust flour on the bees in the field and others watch at the 

 apiary toward which they fly and find the hive to which the floured 

 bees belong. Follow the matter up by finding out how much honey 

 this hive makes (it may be one or two hundred pounds more than any 

 other colony in the neighborhood), and then see if any one can be 

 found who has a microscope and can measure the tongues of the red- 

 clover bees, comparing them with the tongues of bees that do not 

 work on red clover. Finally, have a member, or committee, of the 

 class write up the story and get it printed in the local paper and in 

 some bee journal. Possibly, if all the boys and girls in the United 

 States keep a sharp lookout all next summer, not more than a dozen 

 will find honeybees working on red clover. But even if these few 

 were discovered, by modern methods of queen rearing we might have 

 within ten or fifteen years, the long-tongued bees as common as 

 ordinary bees are now. 



Comparative Value of Different Races of Bees 



(Marked on a scale of ten. Estimates of Frank Benton) 



