FIRE BLIGHT 
359 
injurious to their wings; and by spreading 
the feed no bee will be compelled to crowd 
against its neighbor. 
FENCE. —See Comb Honey. 
FERTILE “WORKERS.— See Laying 
Workers. 
FERTILIZATION OF FLOWERS BY 
BEES. — See Pollination. 
FIGWORT (Scrophularia marilandica ). 
-—Also called heal-all, square-stalk, and 
carpenter’s square. A strong-smelling herb, 
3 to 6 feet tall, with square stems, opposite 
leaves, and small greenish-purple flowers, 
growing in woodlands and hedges from 
Massachusetts to Kansas and Louisiana. 
The abundant nectar is secreted in two 
large drops by the base of the ovary. In 
1879 a small field of figwort at Medina, 
0., made a remarkable showing. Honey¬ 
bees visited the flowers from morning until 
night during the entire period of bloom¬ 
ing. On the average a flower was visited 
once a minute. After the nectar was re¬ 
moved other drops would exude in about 
two minutes. At one time this plant ex¬ 
cited a considerable furore among beekeep¬ 
ers, as it was thought that for artificial 
pasturage it would exceed anything then 
known. The honey obtained would not 
warrant, however, the large expense of its 
cultivation. The flowers are also very fre¬ 
quently visited by wasps. Several other 
species of figwort occur in this country. 
S. nodosa is a European species. 
FIRE BLIGHT. —About a score of years 
ago bees were accused of being a serious 
factor in the spread of fire blight. Altho 
this charge was based on wholly insufficient 
observation and experiment, it was gener¬ 
ally accepted, doubtless, as Merrill ob¬ 
serves, because bees are so abundant in 
orchards at blooming time. By tending to 
check the growth of bee culture this belief 
has been injurious to both beekeepers and 
fruit-growers. But during the last half- 
dozen years evidence has rapidly accumu¬ 
lated, which shows that blight is spread by 
other agencies and fully exonerates the 
honeybee. 
THE NATURE OF FIRE BLIGHT. 
Eire blight is a bacterial disease, which 
attacks the twigs and ends of the branches 
of apple and pear trees and blights the 
leaves and flowers. If not checked it may 
extend to the entire branch, or may finally 
even kill the tree. Usually the infections 
die out in a few weeks; but, here and there, 
at the point where the dead limb joins the 
living wood, a few survive the winter. In 
the spring they resume their activity and 
exude a gummy substance filled with 
germs. They are called “hold-over can¬ 
kers.” From these cankers the germs are 
widely disseminated thru the orchard, and 
a new outbreak of blight follows. The 
question at once arises, what agencies act 
as carriers of the germs. It is certain that 
the honeybee is not one of them, for it re¬ 
stricts its visits entirely to the bloom of the 
trees. There is not a single instance on 
record of a bee visiting the exuding can¬ 
kers. Nor is it claimed that it does. Dur¬ 
ing three years’ close observation at bloom¬ 
ing time W. A. Ruth did not observe a sin¬ 
gle ease of an insect visiting the exuding 
cankers. It has been suggested that ants, 
which roam everywhere, may carry the 
blight bacteria to plant-lice feeding on the 
leaves; but this supposition does not ap¬ 
pear to be based on direct observation. It is 
probable that the wind, not insects, as will 
be shown later, is the chief agent in their 
distribution. 
WHEN OUTBREAKS OCCUR. 
There may be repeated outbreaks of fire 
blight in April,'May, June, July, and Aug¬ 
ust; but the chief months for blight are 
May, June, and July. Thus this disease is 
by no means confined to the blooming time 
of the apple and pear. Clearly the ap¬ 
pearance of fire blight, when there is no 
bloom on the trees, can not be attributed 
to the honeybee, for it can prove an -alibi; 
it is busy elsewhere. Yet these outbreaks 
are as severe as, or more so than, those 
which occur in blooming time. 
LEAF HOPPERS IMPORTANT CARRIERS. 
In a paper on the control of fire blight 
by A. C. Burrill, published in Phytopath¬ 
ology, December, 1915, there was described 
a series of experiments, which shows that 
aphids, or plant lice, and leaf hoppers car¬ 
ried the infection from blighted leaves to 
perfectly healthy shoots of the wild crab 
apple. After five years’ experience Bur- 
