Texas Beekeeping. 11 



complete without a few colonies of bees that will furnish that most 

 delicious natural sweet, pure honey, that can not be replaced as a 

 most palatable, healthful, nourishing food. 



A serious trouble and a great mistake of the majority of farmers, 

 however, is their neglect of these most important of their friends, the 

 honey bees. Nothing suffers more easily from this than these little 

 creatures. They should receive as good care as is given to anything 

 else on the farm. Their value on the farm can not be overestimated. 



THE bees' EEAL MISSION. 



It is not generally sufficiently understood that honey bees were not 

 only created for the purpose of furnishing mankind with delicious 

 honey, but for another and much more important reason — that of 

 fructifying the flowers visited by them so it may be made possible for 

 these to bear fruit and seeds. The most of our host of plants abso- 

 lutely require the visits of the honey bees, or other insects, to carry 

 pollen from one flower to another and thereby fertilize the blossoms. 

 Pollen is gathered by bees from flowers and carried to the hives in 

 little bright colored pellets on their hind legs, for food. They must 

 have pollen to prepare the partly digested food with which the ^ n'^.g 

 larvae are fed. Inability to secure sufficient pollen causes delayed, 

 or diminished, progress of the colonies of bees. Ordinarily but one 

 kind of flower is visited on a trip when pollen is being gathered. In 

 gathering either pollen or honey the bees come in contact wi*th the 

 pollen grains of the blossoms, which adhere to their hairy bodies 

 and are then carried to other flowers visited by them. In passing 

 from flower to flower some of the pollen grains come in touch with 

 the stigmas of each flower visited, which effects cross fertilization and 

 thorough setting of fruits and seeds. It is thus that the bees pay 

 abundantly, by their services, for the treasures the nectar yielding 

 blossoms offer to them. The exceeding interdependence of flowers and 

 insects and the vast necessity of this has long been recognized by hor- 

 ticulturists and other authorities. 



Honey bees are the most important distributors of pollen of all in- 



Where the orchard pays. 



