4 ARKANSAS EXPERIMENT STATION 



ing To the fruit grower, the truck gardener, and the cotton 

 grower bees may be more Valuable in the aid of securing a crop 



than for honey production. ^^^^^nfinn nf 



It has been experimentally proved that the Production o 

 most varieties of apples, pears, plums, cherries raspberries anu 

 gooseberries depends upon the transmission by insects or me 

 fertilizing pollen from flower to flower of different trees or varie- 

 ties. Among the various insects that assist in the transferring 

 of pollen, the honey bee is certainly the most important single 

 agent. Fruit growers in California seem to have realized tnis, 

 since many of them pay the beekeepers from two to five dollars 

 for each colony of bees placed in the orchard. 



Recent experiments have brought out the fact that cotton 

 especially long staple varieties, depends to a considerable extent 

 on insects for pollination. It is recognized that growers of long 

 staple varieties of cotton will find beekeeping a distinct advant- 

 age to the cotton crop. In regard to the value of cotton as a 

 honey plant the reader is referred to page 30. 



There is an old theory that bees will injure ripe fruit, espec- 

 ially grapes. This supposition is entirely unwarranted as has 

 been shown by many investigators. That bees will not injure the 

 skin of sound fruit can be determined by anyone by placing sound 

 fruit in a hive, where it is surrounded by thousands of bees. It 

 will be found that the fruit remains uninjured. Ripe fruit is 

 often injured by birds or wasps, and bees will try to secure the 

 fruit juice that would otherwise be lost. 



THE COLONY 



A colony of bees consists normally of one queen, who is in 

 nowise the ruler, but who is the mother of the colony, a number 

 of workers, and in the summer, a few hundred drones or males. 

 The number of workers in a colony varies between wide limits. 

 These limits have been given as from 1,000 to 50,000. However, 

 strong colonies, colonies that will store an abundant surplus, 

 should have as many as 80,000 or 100,000 workers. 



The Queen. Under normal conditions there is but one 

 queen in a colony. She is the only perfect female. She is larger 

 than the other bees, her abdomen is longer than that of the 

 workers and her wings are shorter in proportion to those of the 

 worker. The queen has a curved sting which, as a rule, she 

 uses only in killing other queens. Her only task is that of 

 laying eggs in that part of the hive used for rearing brood. The 

 number of eggs laid in a day varies with the different seasons. 

 At the height of brood rearing as many as 3500 eggs may be 

 laid in a day. A queen may live four or five years, but as a rule 

 she cannot perform her task satisfactorily longer than two or 

 three years. A virgin queen leaves the hive four or five days 



