BEE MANUAL. 79 
Darwin has proved experimentally the great advantages 
rendered to agriculture by the bee, in the fertilization of clo- 
vers, etc.; and Mr. Cheshire and many other writers have 
demonstrated in a satisfactory manner the services rendered to 
horticulture by the action of bees upon the fruit blossoms. 
Finally, the peculiar value of bees, as compared with other 
insects, in the business of fertilizing plants, is thus described by 
Herman Miller, in his book on “ The Fertilization of Flowers,” 
when speaking of the various fertilizing insects :— 
** Bees, which not only feed on the produce of flowers, but nourish 
their young also thereon, are in such intimate and lifelong relations 
with flowers, that they show more adaptation to a floral diet, and are 
more important for the fertilization of our flowers, and have therefore 
led to more adaptive modifications in these flowers, than all the fore- 
going orders (of insects) put together... .. 
‘* Bees, as the most skilful and diligent visitors, have played the 
chief part in the evolution of flowers; we owe to them the most nume- 
rous, most varied, and most specialised forms. Flowers adapted to 
bees probably surpass all others together in variety of colour. The 
most specialised, and especially the gregarious, bees have produced 
great differentiations in colour, which enable them, on their journeys, 
to keep to a single species of flower. While those flowers which are 
fitted for a miscellaneous lot of short-lipped insects usually exhibit 
similar colours (esnecially white or yellow) over arange of several 
allied species, the most closely allied species growing in the same loca- 
lity, when adapted for bees, are usually of different colours, and can 
thereby be recognised at a glance (e.g., Trifolium, Lamium, Tenerium, 
Pedicularis).”’ 
prxiom, 
‘‘ Bees, WHEN FRIGHTENED BY SMOKE, OR BY DRUMMING ON THEIR 
HIVES, FILL THEMSELVES WITH HONEY, AND LOSE ALL DISPOSITION TO 
STING, UNLESS THEY ARE HURT.” Langstroth. 
