Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 238, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 October 1916 — WHAT FARMERS OWE to the BEE [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

WHAT FARMERS OWE to the BEE

Colonies of honey makers necessary to fruit raising because they are the chief fertilizing agent: :,And there can be nothing more tempting than hot biscuit and honey for breakfast on a crisp winter morning

By ROBERT H . MOULTON.

SARMERS in this country are just coining to realize the debt which they owe to the honey bee. It has long been understood, of course, that this busy little insect fertilizes the blossoms of apple and other fruit trees and so helps to increase the crop, yet the bee has seldom been credited with doing so much good as is actually the case. Indeed, in times past some fruit growers have sought to get rid of the bees on the ground that they damage the ripe fruit. The crop so quickly decreased in size, however, that the fruit men were glad enough to have the bees back again. There is a well-es-tablished belief that bees puncture grapes in order to extract the sweet juice, but the fallacy of this belief has been proved beyond a doubt. Ripe fruit has bfeen placed inside a beehive, with thousands of the insects present, but it has not been molested. It is true that if hornets or birds make holes in grapes, pears or other ripe fruit, the bees will feed on the juice which is exuded. In point of fact, the jaws of the honey bee are so made that it would be unable to bite into or otherwise make holes in fruit, even if it had a will to do so. Orchards in which bees are present in large inumbers are almost always much more productive than those in which only a few bees are to be found and many apple growers are now establishing apiaries in or near their orchards. It is inot necessary to have the hives actually under the ■trees and it may be better to have them in an adjoining field if the orchard is to be cultivated, as otherwise the hives might be in the way and the horses stung. Bees seem to have an instinctive dislike for horses and will even attack the beekeeper sometimes if he starts to work in the bee yard when the odor of horses is upon his clothing. Beekeeping is not to be recommended to hostlers. To the orchafdlst the honey and wax which he igets from his bees are merely by-products. An extra yield in fruit is what he is after. And he igets it, as may be judged from an instance cited by one of the state experiment stations. It seems (that two orchards situated in the same part of the country were cultivated in exactly the same manner and had the same kinds of trees. Yet one was prolific and the other a failure. When the experiment station was appealed to, the trouble was diagnosed as a lack of bees to pollinate the flowers. “You are wrong,” the answer was flashed back, “for there are no .bees in either orchard.” The inspector was not convinced, however, and .after a search he found a very strong colony of bees in a fallen log in one corner of the bearing orchard. Bees were immediately installed in the other orchard by the owner, and as a resulthe netted nearly $4,000 the next season—pretty good Interest on an Investment of sls or S2O in bees. Most people do not know that an apple blossom requires to be fertilized several times In order to produce the best fruit, but this is a fact. Moreover, the blossoms of some trees must be pollinized ifrom another source if fruit is to be set. The iwork is done largely by honey bees, although wild ibees and other insects help out to some extent. Once, as a test case, 2,580 apple blossoms were covered in order to keep the bees away, and only ithree apples matured. Of bourse, the bee does not ipollinize the blossoms purposely. She is in search

of nectar from which to make honey, but afl unconsciously she brushes the pollen from one flower and carries it along to another, thus carrying on her part of nature’s plan. The value derived from the fertilization of blossoms in this way is probably much greater than that of all the honey and wax made by the sum total of all the bees in the country. . It is practically Impossible to grow cucumbers in the greenhouse unless bees are depended upon to fertilize the blossoms, and so the market gardeners are obliged to yield tribute to this useful insect. Even in the dead of winter, with snow drifts six feet high outside, thousands of bees are to be found flying around in the great glass houses where cucumbers are produced for the exclusive winter trade. It is true that the bees get but little nectar from the blossoms and have to be fed on sugar sirup, but they accomplish the purpose of transferring pollen from one flower to another. Of course this work might be done artificially. That is, a man might go from one blossom to another with a small brush and transfer the pollen, but the process would be tedious and too expen-

sive to be feasible. It has to be done in greenhouses where strawberries are grown, for when bees are used the fruit is always misshapen, but the winter strawberries sell for a dollar or two a ~ pint ! ' . / .'"T Perhaps it may be said without getting anybody into trouble that the free use of water by spraying makes possible some of the remarkable exhibitions which bees occasionally give. Water is not always used, by any means, but when it is the bees are rendered surprisingly tractable and docile. There are no bee tamers, however, who —are not. stung at times.- Indeed,- -they may-be-stung very often, but they are inured to the experience and do not even wince. And, of course, an experienced beekeeper learns how to handle bees without making them angry. Furthermore, some bees are much gentler than others. Many times it is a good plan to kill the queen in a cross colony find replace her with a young queen from a quiet colony. Yet the cross bees are likely to be among the best honey producers in the apiary. Many farmers fail to succeed with bees simply because they neglect to learn anything about their management. It is true that bees do not require a great amount of attention and do best when left alone most of the time. Yet there are certain things which have to be done just at the right time and in just the right way. These are the few things that the farmer should know about. In early spring, for example, the bees may easily starve to den th for luck of—stores, although theymay have come through the winter safely. In that event they must be fed on sugar sirup if no honey is available. Equal amounts of sugar and water may be used and it is best to have the water warmed, but the sugar should never be melted on the stove, as it IS likely to be burned. The sirup may be given in one of several different kinds of feeders, but few are better than a shallow pan from the ten-cent store with a little excelsior in it for the bees to walk on. If this pan filled with sirup is placed on top of the frames

of the hives the bees will quickly take the liquid down and be tided over the period of famine. It is a mistake for any farmer to try to keep bees In the old-fashioned box hives, for they cannot be managed so well and getting the honey out is likely to be a painful as well as exciting process. Likewise, thousands of bees are needlessly sacrificed, and the hives are almost sure to be neglected. Modern hives cost but little, yet may be taken entirely to pieces and the bees looked over without the loss of a single one. And

taking honey out is no trouble at all, when a bee escape is used, for the bees do not even now what is going on. -—— The best way to begin beekeeping is to buy a colony dr two"from some up-to-date apiarist in the neighborhood, but a hive full of bees can be shipped by express or the insects may be bought by the pound if one already has an empty hive. Indeed, this is a practice w'hich is becoming very common, for even experienced beekeepers often investiir = one, two or tin ee-pound packages or bees in order to build up weak colonies. It is not an unusual thing for bees to be shipped all the way from Texas to Canada. Sometimes wild bees may be, captured in the woods and brought home. Although called wild bees, these honey makers w’hich are found in logs and hollow trees haje escaped from captivity at some time, for there were no honey bees in this country until they w’ere brought here by the Pilgrim Fathers. If the farmer owns more than half a dozen colonies of bees it will pay him to get an extractor. This is a simple device for separating the honey from the combs, the latter being placed in a frajpe which revolves at a high rate of speed, the liquid honey being thrown out of the wax cells by centrifugal force, just as cream is separated from milk. Then the combs may be put back in the hives for the bees to fill again. The farmer can usually get more honey this way and will have less swarming. " "