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lias been done, also, in ameliorating the races of bees, both by intro- 
ducing races from other countries and by the crossing" of these. There 
are some three hundred thousand of our citizens engaged in bee culture, 
and they add over twenty million dollars annually to the wealth of the 
country in honey and wax. This amount may be, and in the near 
future doubtless will be, very largely increased. It is, in fact, difficult 
to realize what an immense amount of honey is wasted from lack of 
bees to garner it, and the poet Gray would seem to have had his own 
ideas on the subject when he wrote the familiar lines: 
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, 
And waste its sweetness on the desert air. 
The service directly rendered to man by bees, however, in supplying 
the products mentioned, is but slight as compared with the service 
indirectly rendered by cross-fertilization of our cultivated plants, and 
it has been estimated that the annual addition to our wealth by bees 
in this direction alone far exceeds that derived from honey and wax. 
One of the latest discoveries bearing on this subject, very fully enforc- 
ing the general principle, was presented to the Society for the first time 
within the past year by our fellow-member, Mr. M. B. Waite, as a result 
of his investigations for the Division of Vegetable Pathology in the 
Department of Agriculture. He has proved that a majority of the 
more valued varieties of our apples and pears are nearly or wholly 
sterile when fertilized by pollen of the same variety, or that they bear 
fruit of an inferior character and very different from that produced 
when cross-fertilized; further, that were it not for the cross-fertilizing 
agency of bees, scarcely any of these fruits could be produced in the 
abundance and perfection in which we now get them, and that to secure 
the best results and facilitate the work of the bees, it is yet necessary, 
in the large majority of cases, to mix varieties in the same orchard. 
Bees were doubtless the earliest embalmers, since they use the propolis 
to encase, and thus prevent the putrefaction of any intruder which is 
too large for them to drag out of the hive. 
There is much, even to-day, in the economy of the Hive Bee that is 
yet debated among the best informed apiarians, but I will endeavor to 
give you an epitome of what is absolutely known of its more important 
habits, structures, and functions — the true life-history, so to speak, of 
the bee. By going somewhat into detail with this species, we may 
avoid repetition in treating of the other social Hymenoptera, all of 
which have somewhat similar larvae and transformations. Let us, in 
imagination, proceed to an ordinary well-kept apiary. Taking a bee- 
smoker in one hand — one of the pattern invented by the late M. Quinby, 
of New York — we lift one corner of the hive cover or quilt and send 
enough smoke down among the bees to give them to understand that 
they must submit to our manipulation. Drawing out one of the brood 
combs, which is rendered easy by the movable frames, thousands of 
the bees are seen adhering to the surface of the comb. They are mostly 
