THE INFLUENCE OF BEES ON CROPS. 27vJ 



How wonderfully has Nature protected this invaluable insect, 

 the bee — valuable not as a honey-storer, but as a fruit-producer. 

 Practically the adult bee has no enemy, if we except the wood 

 swallow, and in the egg and larval stages its home is almost im- 

 pregnable to invaders. Of course, like the human family and 

 other animals, it is liable to the "ills that flesh is heir to." In 

 a state of nature bee ova and larva have one arch enemy — the 

 bee moth — and it is as well it should be so. Bees in a state of 

 nature are a great drawback to bee-keepers. The honey, when 

 obtained, is a fourth-rate quality owing to the quantity of foreign 

 matter mixed through it. That same honey, if stored in the frames 

 of the hives of practical bee-keepers, would be worth four times 

 as much as when obtained as bush honey. But this is a digression. 

 To the careful bee-keeper, enemies, not diseases, to the eggs, larva, 

 and young bees are rarely known. The bee-keeper having his stock 

 under control can, with the greatest ease, regulate the supply and 

 demand. 



No district can be overstocked with bees, if we regard them 

 as fruit- fertilisers, only, but as honey-gatherers it is another mat- 

 ter. The 'greatefiiumber of bees kepfr in an orchard or fruit dis- 

 trict the more rapidly is fertilisation carried on. Once the bee 

 has carried, the pollen to the pistil, the act of fructification being 

 successful, the development of the fruit is assured — the fruit has 

 set. A few. days after the bloom of the trees has disappeared the 

 infant fruit can be seen in the early stages of growth. Standing 

 near an apple, orange, or other tree, when the fruit is in its 

 earliest stage, and a gentle wind shakes the branches, you will 

 sometimes hear the fruit falling in hundreds, or if the tree is shaken 

 the same results will follow. In walking through an orchard in 

 spring-time young fruit just formed are always seen in greater or 

 less numbers scattered on the ground. The premature falling of 

 these fruits is, generally, the result of imperfect fertilisation, 

 caused either by slight injuries to the stigma or an insufficient 

 number of bees to discharge the duties Nature requires of them, 

 i.e., fructification. The same results will follow if the blossoms 

 after pollenisation are frost-bitten, or cutting winds, or the con- 

 ditions of the growth or its development checked. All these and 

 others will prevent the young fruit progressing to maturity. Some- 

 times the crop of. fruit will be too heavy for the tree to carry, i.e., 

 the sap is insufficient to supply the young with the nourishment 

 required. 



