640 
THB RURAL NEW-YORKER 
April 12, 
THE PEACH-TREE BQRER. 
Now is the time to look for the 
peach tree borer, the worst insect enemy 
of the peach, with the possible exception 
*of the San Jose scale. The Spring is 
the best time for removing these borers. 
Take a piece of soft wire, hack the end 
with your knife so as to make rough 
barbs, and push it along into the burrow 
made by the borer. The grub or pieces 
of him will come out with the wire if 
you have reached him. It is quite pos¬ 
sible in some cases to cut the borer out. 
With a sharp knife make a lengthwise 
slit in the bark where the borer seems 
to be and dig it out. Be sure to cut 
lengthwise, as a cross-wise cut will 
seriously damage the tree. After you 
have got rid of the borers already in 
the tree trunk, it is time to prevent fur¬ 
ther infestation. Mound up earth 
around the base of the tree, as high 
as you can pile it. This forces the 
moths to lay their eggs high up on the 
trunk, where the young grubs can be 
easily seen. For some reason or other, 
there seem to be less grubs hatch from 
PEACH BORER ON TRUNK. Fig. 167. 
eggs laid high up on the trunk. It is a 
good plan, too, to wrap heavy paper 
around the tree. Have it extend well 
down into the ground below and reach 
well up towards the crotch at the top. 
Tie it tightly with twine and be sure 
that none of the lower part of the 
trunk is left exposed. There is no dan¬ 
ger of “strangling” the tree with the cord, 
as it will rot from exposure to the 
weather before the Summer is over. 
Many protective washes have been rec¬ 
ommended to drive away the adult 
moths. About all that may be said of 
these washes, however, is that they are 
only partly successful. 
Worming, as described above, in the 
Fall, is one .of the best ways of getting 
rid of the young grubs, as at that 
time the grubs are rather accessible. 
They may generally be found on the 
surface of the bark, more or less in¬ 
volved in. a mass of gum and excreta, 
with which they may be readily scraped 
from the tree and destroyed. A small 
hook or curved steel blade four or five 
inches long with a handle about a foot 
in length makes a very satisfactory tool 
for this work. Eggs are laid from 
June to September on the bark near 
the base of the tree, as a general rule. 
Occasionally they may be deposited on 
the ground or on weeds. In a few 
days the eggs hatch and the grubs ear 
their way through the bark to the soft 
inner layer. While entering the tree, 
the grub leaves its characteristic traces. 
A fine wood dust or masses of gummy 
material, mixed with sawdust or soil, 
on the bark indicate the presence of the. 
borer. The borer stays under the bark 
all Summer, feeding around, sometimes 
almost girdling the tree. With the ap¬ 
proach of cold weather the insect ceases 
its activities and hibernates for the 
Winter in its snug little burrow. In 
the Spring feeding is again resumed. 
When full grown, the larva makes 
its cocoon, generally on the bark at or 
near the surface of the ground. This 
cocoon is certainly an odd appearing 
object, made up of bits of excrement, 
soil, and bark, -all fastened together with 
gum and a thin lining of silk. In this 
cocoon it transforms to a pupa and 
about three weeks later emerges as a 
clear-winged moth. The fore wings of 
the female are clouded. It resembles 
somewhat a wasp, and is dark blue in 
color. Within a few days after emer¬ 
gence the moths mate and the females 
commence laying their eggs. 
New Hampshire. c. h. hadley. 
THE BEE-KEEPING HABIT. 
I would like to offer a few reasons 
why the busy farmer does not keep 
bees, as M. B. Dean asks on page 281. 
It is very true that a large number of 
farmers used to keep a few hives, 
“skeps,” as they were generally called, 
enough generally for their own supply 
of honey. In the first place the farmers 
of past days depended on their farm 
to furnish nearly the whole amount of 
food stuffs for the table. Not only 
did they produce their own honey but 
also their wheat, butter, fresh pork and 
in fact everything that was possible 
On the large dairy farms of this sec¬ 
tion most of the farmers buy their but¬ 
ter, thinking that it is possible to do 
so as cheaply as to make it themselves. 
Also, the wheat flour is purchased at 
the store, instead of being grown at 
home. 
Let us see one of the reasons why 
this is done. Old residents will tell us' 
that the time is not far past when there 
were plenty of wheatfields about here, 
but that the weevil has created such 
destruction that the crop has been 
abandoned. Now to the cause of the 
scarcity of bees. In past years the 
keeping of bees was simply a case of 
making a box, almost any kind would 
do, and keeping the swarm in some pro¬ 
tected spot. Let us see how the situa¬ 
tion has changed. In the first place the 
world-wide disease “foul brood” has 
come, as did the weevil in the wheat. 
Old bee-keepers who had devoted their 
whole lives to the care and study of the 
honey-bee lost nearly the whole of their 
swarms. The disease is highly contagi¬ 
ous, and at that time was a new proposi¬ 
tion. Once in a locality it is very likely 
to spread to nearly every apiary in the 
neighborhood. Right here is the rea¬ 
son why the “farmer” bee-keeper was 
wiped out of existence, knowing little 
or nothing of the disease or its ravages 
they seldom knew anything was the 
trouble, or more often thought it a 
case of natural dying off. Quite often 
it was credited to the millers, as the 
wax moth is often called by those who 
do not know. A strong swarm will 
successfully resist such things as “mil¬ 
lers.” But one dying from foul brood 
will not always win the struggle. The 
ordinary farmer has not the knowledge 
or time, and as a general thing the 
inclination to fuss around a hive of 
wideawake bees. In a box hive the 
disease cannot be helped, and the death 
of the swarm is almost a sure thing. 
Even in an up-to-date frame hive the 
average man could not cure the sick¬ 
ness, and if one hive falls victim the 
other hives are more than liable to catch 
the disease. A large number of men even 
now do not know the existence of foul 
brood. Last Summer while passing 
through Oswego County I stopped at a 
man’s house where there were about a 
dozen hives. In the course of our talk 
he mentioned that the millers had killed 
some of his bees. I asked him if it was 
not foul brood, and he replied that he 
did not believe in these newfangled 
notions regarding such things. Mr. 
Dean has had the good luck to miss 
this trouble, or at least he did not men¬ 
tion it. Take all things together there 
are things to overcome in the bee busi¬ 
ness as in everything else. The person 
who does not care for bees, or take 
pleasure in solving.the mysteries of the 
hive, would better think twice before 
going to the expense of purchasing bees. 
Otsego Co., N. Y. j. c. wickham. 
LOOSENED BARK ON FRUIT TREES. 
C. 8. L., Germantown, A. V.—What pre¬ 
paration could I use on sweet cherry and 
apple trees? The bark has loosened on the 
butts and the wood is exposed to the 
weather. I have quite a few. Grafting 
wax is too expensive, and I have been 
using cement, but with no good result. 
When the bark begins to grow it cracks 
and crumbles off along the edge and lets in 
water. 
Ans. —These trees are apparently 
quite old in both cases. Judging from 
your description, the trouble on the 
bodies of the apple trees is a condition 
known as “crown or collar rot.” In 
the case of the apples the varieties 
Duchess of Oldenburg, King, Twenty 
Ounce, Alexander, and in some in¬ 
stances Greening and Baldwin are very 
susceptible. Trees of the first three 
varieties named above are often killed 
by the disease before they reach 20 
years of age, and orchards of the va¬ 
rieties often die out almost completely 
before they are 40 years old. Patholo¬ 
gists have not sent forth a practical 
method of stopping the disease in an 
orchard. The latest information availa¬ 
ble states that the trouble is believed 
to be caused by frost injury in some 
cases and by fire blight in others. In 
case of frost injury,, which in most 
orchards is the predominating cause of 
the trouble, the varieties named ap¬ 
parently have too tender bark at the 
crown of the trees to stand the action 
of the freezing and thawing. Horti¬ 
culturists have recommended, therefore, 
that these three varieties be top- 
worked on some hardy variety. It is 
a question whether the application of 
grafting wax or one of the asphaltum 
preparations on wounds caused by the 
trouble, would pay. L. f. s. 
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C. V. BOLLER COMPANY 
372 Bridge Street, New York City 
, The House for Men and Boys 
E. Frank Coe Fertilizers 
1857 STANDARD FOR OVER FIFTY-FIVE YEARS 1013 
Are Available Plant Foods 
Slow acting and unavailable materials may pos¬ 
sibly benefit the farming done by your great grandson, 
but your profits for 1913 depend on the use of A vail - 
able Plant Foods this spring 
We quote, in part, from an able article in The 
Rural New-Yorker for March 29th, 1913, by Dr. 
Jacob G. Lipman, Director of the New Jersey State 
Experiment Station:— 
“Even though these soils contain many thousands of pounds of potash 
and phosphoric acid, they respond to applications of small quantities of mur¬ 
iate of potash and acid phosphate because these materials carry their plant 
food in available forms. * * * * 
“The soils of New England and the soils of New Jersey, even though 
they have been cultivated for many years, produce more corn, more hay, and 
more wheat per acre, than the soils of Ohio, Indiana, or even Iowa or Illinois. 
“The farmers of New Jersey have increased the yield of potatoes per 
acre, by nearly 15 bushels, the last ten years. The potato growers of 
Maine are able to produce 250 and 300 bushels of potatoes per acre, as 
are the progressive potato growers of our own State, largely because of the 
use of commercial fertilizer. 
“The potato growers of Germany, Belgium and France produce large 
yields, thanks to their knowledge of the value of commercial fertilizers. * ;;; 
“Progress in our knowledge of soil fertility has been based on the recog¬ 
nition that plant food, in order to be of direct service to plants, must be 
available. ” 
Mr. H. W. Collingwood, the able editor of 
The Rural New-Yorker, further says on the editorial 
page of the same issue:— 
“ A good share of our people are fed and clothed through the fertilizers used on food 
and cotton crops. Further than this, history shows that as soil* grow older in use, thf. 
Workers invariably come to the use of available plant food.' * 
During the past fifty years thousands of farmers have found E. Frank 
Coe Fertilizers to be available plant foods of the best quality. 
Although it is now rather late to purchase fertilizers the convenient 
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(Be sure to mention your farm paper when you write us.) 
The Coe-Mortimer Company 
51 CHAMBERS STREET 
NEW YORK CITY 
