1909. 
DO BEES DESTROY FRUIT? 
An Old Question Repeated Once More. 
We have a few farmers here keeping bees. We also 
have one who has a small vineyard. Last year was a 
dry one, and the grape grower claimed the bees destroyed 
his grapes, and notified the bee men to keep their 
bees home. This year he has sown a patch of buck¬ 
wheat. When in bloom he sprayed it with poison to kill 
the bees. Is there danger in eating the honey? Can he 
be punished for it? a. s. 
Ohio. 
This question of bees damaging fruit is an old 
and oft-recurring one, and can be answered in only 
one way. From the construction of the mouth parts 
of the honey-bee it is an absolute impossibility for a 
bee to puncture the skin of any sound fruit. This 
can be proved, and very often has been, by either 
placing a bee under the microscope or by placing 
the fruit in the hive. In the first case the mandibles 
can be plainly seen, and it can also be seen that 
organs which were created solely to work wax, are 
not suitable for breaking the skin of a grape or 
peach. In the second case the fact will also be seen 
that sound grapes will not be injured so long as 
they remain sound in the hive, but a puncture by a 
fine needle will be found by the bees, and the juice 
will all be sucked from the grape, or other fruit, in 
very short order. Now, while it is easy to prove the 
impossibility of the bee doing the first damage, it 
is also a fact that bees will take advan¬ 
tage of the work of the hornet, which 
has mouth parts which can easily open 
a grape, or almost any other kind of 
fruit, also several species of birds and 
insects, which often puncture fruit, and 
even a small speck of rot will give them 
a chance to get at the juice. In case 
there are no nectar-bearing blossoms 
open at the time, they will take the 
juice. But if there be any other source 
of getting honey, they will never touch 
fruit of any kind at any time. 
In regard to whether the honey would 
be unfit for use, I do not know, but if 
there are many bees in the vicinity, and 
lots of other buckwheat fields, I should 
not be afraid of poison in the honey. I 
would also watch the hives, and if the 
bees were getting much poison you 
will find dead larvae on the alighting 
boards of the hives in the morning. If 
not, the bees are not being hurt by the 
poison. I do not know what the laws 
of Ohio are in regard to spraying 
poison on crops or blossoms, but from 
the often-rendered decisions of the 
courts that bees are property and may 
be kept the same as other stock, it 
does not seem reasonable that anyone 
would have a right to poison them any¬ 
where. In New York State a man 
would be apt to get a State prison sen¬ 
tence for wilfully placing poison for 
another man’s stock, and it would prob¬ 
ably make no difference whether the 
stock was bees or horses, if a case were 
proved. These farmer bee-keepers 
should join the National Bee-Keepers’ 
Association; then, when these cases 
came up, they would know where to 
look for help and information when 
needed. As a general rule a little edu¬ 
cation and investigation and explana¬ 
tion will save any trouble, and the asso¬ 
ciation is for the purpose of doing these 
things for its members. The bee-keeper 
is in reality one of the best friends the fruit grower 
has, the bees paying, by carrying pollen from one 
blossom to the other, many times the damage they do 
by working the damaged fruit, and they never work 
any other. j. A. crane. 
Wayne Co., N. Y. 
SEEDING OATS AND PEAS. 
We commenced cutting oats and peas for curing 
about the first of August. For three weeks we have 
been feeding them green to the cows. The growth is 
heavy, and the crop is a fine one. The new seeding 
is looking fine, and on that part of the field that was 
mowed over early the clover is coming on with 
marked promise. We are quite in favor of the oat 
and pea crop, although it seems to figure out to cost 
us, one time with another, about $10 a ton to grow 
and harvest them. This allows a work account, fer¬ 
tilizers, seed and interest on land and tools, although 
the land interest cannot be counted very high on 
these cheap farms.. We usually grow hay at $6 or 
$7 a ton, and put it in the barn. It is possible that 
oats and peas are as cheap as the hay, when their 
real feeding value is taken into consideration. Our 
THE RU RA.Iv NEW-YORKER 
reason for growing them is to supplement what would 
otherwise have been a short hay crop. For such 
purposes we seldom plow up anything that will pro¬ 
duce a reasonably good crop of hay. In the cutting 
we are doing now, the clover is looking fine, but it 
is necessary to mow so close that I am afraid what 
the effect will be upon the clover. I would risk it, 
all right, if we were to have an abundance of rain, 
or even a moderate amount. As we have had no 
rain for nearly two weeks, and then only in rather 
small amount, we are feeling somewhat fearful as 
to the effect upon our fine seeding. It has usually 
happened that we get better seeding with oats and 
peas than with oats alone. I have attributed this to 
the fact that the oats and peas are harvested earlier, 
leaving the seeding a better chance to grow; besides 
the ripening process in the oats is said to require a 
large amount of water. A representative from the 
Department of Agriculture was here the other day, 
and he was inclined to attribute the better seeding 
to the influence of the peas. Peas are legumes, and 
are supposed to carry nodules on their roots. It is 
assumed that this condition may be helpful to the 
growth of clover. We found nodules on the roots 
of the little clover plants in abundance, but did not 
find any on the roots of the peas. Later I took a 
shovel and a pail of water and made further investi¬ 
gation, but with no better success. It is true this 
year that the clover in the oats and peas seems to 
be better even before cutting the stuff off than in 
the oats. There may be something in this theory of 
the inoculation. The nodules may be there for all 
our not finding them. H. h. lyon. 
Chenango Co., N. Y. 
OUTLETS AND SILT WELLS. 
While silt wells are and should be a part of many 
draining projects, they are many times used to the 
detriment of the part of the system which has its 
outlet through them; this, when the inlet is brought 
in on a level with the outlet, for the velocity of the 
water would be greater in a continuous pipe. The 
proper location for these catch basins is in some de¬ 
pression where the surface water is not easily dis¬ 
posed of, and it is desired to remove the water which 
accumulates from a storm faster than it could perco¬ 
late through the soil into a drain, but where a field 
system has its outlet through them it is desirable 
to have the lower part of the inlet as high as the 
top of outlet, and higher if it would not £>e taking 
needed grade from the system above. The well in 
Fig. 458 is one on my own farm, six feet deep; has 
803 
a six-inch outlet drilled lYz foot off bottom, but this 
lVz-foot catch basin in the bottom is not much 
needed, for, as will be noted, there is a much larger 
place provided for the deposit of silt from surface 
wash below the screen on top of the ground outside 
of the well. There have been loads of dirt removed 
from here when the field above was Fall-plowed, 
enough to fill a number of such wells clear to the 
top. 
These wells are also useful as flushers put in at 
the foot of a heavy grade where the rest of a main 
is to cross a more level field. The depth of well 
when filled with water is as added grade in scour¬ 
ing effect. This would not be the case without the 
well, for the drains do not run under pressure. I 
have one of these wells not designed to remove any¬ 
thing but surface water; it is located where a small 
run from a neighbor’s field crosses our line, and 
rather than have it crook around through my vine¬ 
yard and adjoining field, I conducted it through one 
of these catch basins to an underground conduit. 
1 he outlet protector hardly needs to be explained; 
the gate being held up to show the end of drain is 
a piece of copper plate fastened to a round hanger, 
which has its two ends in the eyes of two bolts 
placed in the concrete bulkhead for this purpose, this 
plate of course working the same as a swing gate 
over a stream, swinging outward with the water and 
resuming its normal position as the 
water goes down. This has the advan¬ 
tage over a screened outlet of not catch- 
rootlets which come down the drains. 
There are screened outlets on the farm 
and they require more or less looking 
after in the way of removing these 
rootlets that lodge on them. There are 
five outlets on the place with no pro¬ 
tection of any kind, and they have never 
come to grief; but I shall feel safer 
about them when I get them all fixed 
as the one in the picture. 
J. F. VAN SCH00NH0VEN. 
WHAT TO DO WITH OLD SOD. 
In the Spring of 1906 I sowed a field 
of three acres to oats, applying 300 
pounds commercial fertilizer per acre, 
and harvested a fine crop. The ground 
was immediately plowed and seeded to 
Timothy and Red-top. Every Spring it 
was top-dressed with about 200 pounds , 
of nitrate of soda, 200 pounds sulphate 
of potash and magnesia, and 200 pounds 
basic slag meal. The crops of hay for 
1907 and 1908 were very satisfactory, 
but this year I got only about one ton 
per acre. It rusted badly, and was very 
short, more like rowen. On a narrow 
strip through the field last Spring I ap¬ 
plied three times the amount of fertil¬ 
izer that I did on the rest of the field. 
I think that perhaps there might have 
been nearly three times as much hay, 
but it was short and rusted badly, same 
as the other. The question with me is 
what to do. Shall I plow and reseed? 
Could I expect to help matters by burn¬ 
ing the old sod early next Spring? 
Ashby, Mass. c. f. h. 
R. N.-Y.—We shall have to submit 
this question to the highest court we 
know of—our readers. We feel sure 
that some among them have had similar 
experience. The more experience we 
have with soils, and particularly grass 
and clover, the more thoroughly we believe that 
most of such troubles are due to a lack of lime. 
The 200 pounds of basic slag would give only 100 
pounds of lime per acre, while many soils need at 
least 3,000 pounds. As the question is stated we' 
should burn the field over, plow and lime heavily 
and reseed. _ 
“Elbow grease" without method is as useless as too 
much oil on a wheel. 
Tub National forestry service employs 3,000 Angora 
goats for eating down the brush on Are guards. The 
goats clean out the bushes, prevent fires from spreading 
and do the work cheaper than men could. 
During July an average of 17,040 persons a day visited 
the New York Aquarium. The “fish theatre,” as it is 
affectionately termed, is one of the coolest places in New 
York, and is free to the public: during the noon hour it 
is always full of working people, the very sociable seals 
being special favorites with everybody. 
During the six weeks preceding August 10 the Depart¬ 
ment of Commerce and Labor secured work for 3,000 
unskilled men. most of them going to the wheatfields of 
(he Northwest. As the labor organizations have pro¬ 
tested against any activity on the part of the Government 
looking to the employment of skilled labor the operations 
of the Division of Information are confined to unskilled 
labor. 
OUTLET FOR A DRAIN SYSTEM. Fig. 458. 
A HERD OF OHIO SHOW SHORTHORNS. Fig 459. See page 817. 
