8 BEEKEEPING 



of the legume group, melons, cucumbers, 

 etc., are greatly benefited through the 

 work of the bees. When cucumbers are 

 grown under glass the grower must use 

 some artificial means of poUenating the 

 flowers or he will have no crop. In some 

 cases this is done by means of a camel's 

 hair brush coated with pollen and applied 

 with great labor and patience to bloom 

 after bloom. In large commercial cucum- 

 ber houses such work would be so great 

 as to be prohibitive and so the grower 

 uses a colony of bees indoors to do the 

 work for him — and they always do it 

 much better than he could do it by hand 

 and at much less expense. 



Recently some investigators have shown 

 that bees are essential to the "set" of a 

 good crop of cranberries. I have not 

 seen a full account of the work which led 

 to this conclusion, but it is one case where 

 I am just a bit inclined to think the mat- 

 ter is overstated. I happen to have seen 

 wild cranberries growing in the swamps 



