Democratic Sentinel, Volume 11, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 August 1887 — The Mission of the Bumble Bee. [ARTICLE]

The Mission of the Bumble Bee.

An Indiana farmer, who told his boys to burn every bumble bee’s nest they found on the farm, and who was complaining at the failure of his clover seed crop, was surprised when Maurice Thompson, the naturalist, said: “That is why your clover seed fails you. Bumble bees make your clover seed.” It is a fact that a strong nest of bumble bees in a big clover field is worth S2O to the owner; for these insects are the chief agents in fertilizing the blossoms, thereby insuring a heavy crop of seeds. In Australia there are no bumble bees of our kind, and they could not raise clover seed there until they imported some.