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Show THE APIARY BEES AID THE GROWERS. & .. . . "Give the bec a chance and it will literally break the boughs of your - trees with the weight of fruit." ' ' Frank G. Odcll of Lincoln, Neb., bee-master, who gave a scries of demonstrations dem-onstrations 'ith 50,000 bees at the National Apple" Show in Spokane, December 7 to 12, made the foregoing observation in the course of an inter view, discussing bee-keeping, scientific scien-tific agriculture' mid . fruit l growing. He said: - "The bec is thcxpcrt assistant of the horticulturist and the farmer. So J indispensable arc its functions' in the pollination of fruits, vegetables, ocr- eals and gra-sscs that its activities may be said to lie at the foundation of all X successful agriculture. Nature has ordained one supreme law, that of creation, the pcrpctua'tion of the race y type. This law, universal in its ap- ' plication and absolutely identical in its form, obtains in the plant world as in the animal world. The luscious pulp of the fruit is the envelope, the package, the strong ibox, devised by nn.turc to protect the seed within from injury am! render it susceptible of germination so that the type may be reproduced in all its perfection. "The bee, like other insects, effects incidental pollination of flowers in its search for nectar; but its great value to the fruit grower lies in this, that it goes to the flowers specifically to , gather pollen, literally by the carload, in the hairy baskets on its legs, hastening hast-ening from bloom; to bloom, rolling and packing and literally rioting in the golden dust, pregnant with the microscopic germs of plant life, until the f )ldcn pellets arc packed away in i,ts hairy baskets, to be carried to the hive for storage as an indispensable ration of the food of its young during dur-ing the winter months to come. "It requires no expert knowledge to 's comprehend how perfectly the bee ,' thus performs the office of pollina-' pollina-' tion. Indeed, it is nature's chief .agent in this indispensable work. No seed, no fruit, is the universal law. Here is the only insect useful in all its habits, having a fixed habitation accessible to man, dependent upon the pollen of every variety of flower as an indispensable portion of the food of its young, and going to the ibloom specifically to gather that pollen, pol-len, thus making possible the mar-vclousruit mar-vclousruit crops in Washington and the Pacific Northwest. That is why I say,givc the bee a chance and it will literally break the boughs of your trocsnvith the weight of fruit. "Delve into the realm of applied mechanics or structural engineering and your rcascarch is incomplete until un-til a lesson is conned from the structure struc-ture of the honeycomb with its marvelous mar-velous strength as compared with the fragile nature of its fabric. No more marvelous structure exists among the myriad marvelous works of nature. This waxen fabric, derived primarily from liquid honey converted into wax in that marvelous laboratory of the bee, formed1 by some mysterious instinct in-stinct or intelligence into the very form of all others designed for economy econo-my of materials, space and extremity of strength, passes beyond the measure meas-ure of human skill in its perfection. "Somewhere between 1744 and 1768 it was discovered that wax is produced pro-duced between the plates on the lower low-er side of the worker bee's abdomen. It was John Hunter, the celebrated anatomist, who discovered just how the bees secrete wax, and thereby settled a vexed question. He communicated com-municated his discovery in a paper read to the Royal Society of London, February 23, 1793. "Wax is produced at the will of the bee, and when called for by the necessity neces-sity of the hive. The wax-producing bees obtain a somewhat higher temperature, tem-perature, usually by close clustering, though they sometimes hang in slender slend-er festoons and chains. "Wax is not chemically a fat or glyecride, and those who have called it 'the fat of bees' have grossly erred; yet it is nearly allied to the fats in atomic constitution, and the physiological physio-logical conditions favoring the formation forma-tion of one arc curiously similar to those -aiding in the production of the other. We put our poultry up to fat in "confinement, with part light; to secure bodily inactivity we keep warm and feed highly. Our bees, under nature's teaching, put themselves up to yield wax under conditions so parallel par-allel that the' suitability of the fat- teninc oop is vindicated. A v "Chcsirc in his investigations says that on the inner side of the eight plates lining the lower side of the abdomen ab-domen arc about 140,000 glands, from which the wax is secreted as a white liquid, which hardens on exposure. to the air. "It is evident from the best authorities authori-ties that the form and' method of wax secretion were known as early as iogfi, and possibly at even an earlier date. The extraordinary -economy of the use of waoc is shown by the fact that the hive of 8 to 10 gallons capacity capa-city will yield but about two pounds of wax when melted. According to Dr. Donhoff the thickness of the sides of a cell in a new comb is only the ii8oth part of an inch. Cheshire states that he found some that measured meas-ured only 1 400th part of an inch. "Notwithstanding the fragile nature of the honeycomb it is still sufficiently sufficient-ly strong to carry the relatively immense im-mense load of sweets stored" in its oclls. The perfection of insect labor is shown, by the fact that human ingenuity in-genuity has never been able to make artificial honey-comb. The talcs concerning con-cerning manufactured comb honey arc figments of the imagination. Consider Consid-er that any machinery devised for manfacturing honey -comb would make oil parts alike in similar sections. sec-tions. Examine carefully two or, more one-pound boxes of honey at your grocers and you will note differences dif-ferences in the finish of cappings and building the comb fast to the wooden casing, which will at once convince you of the genuineness of the articlj "Not only docs the bee cxccll as an artisan, but also as a chemist. Its honey stomach is the most delicate diemical laboratory in the world. Here the nectar of the flowers is transformed from a highly diluted sweet, susceptible of speedy fermen-. tation, into the most perfect fool product known. This chemical change, inverting the sugar, according to the clKmist's phrase, is undoubtedly accomplished ac-complished in the laboratory of the bee hiring its short flight from the field to the hive. This chemical reaction re-action is so delicate that, no laboratory labora-tory aside from that of the bec can successfully accomplish it. "Consider the queen bee, the sole and undisputed monarch of her empire. em-pire. Endowed . with powers superhuman, super-human, she governs without exercis- toff&XfeSlite authority, rules WjtalL coercion. Her subjects go about their tasks with that c hue mil zcal which H can only accompany toil fully rccom- ,H pensed, and offer to men, torn into H factions of contending opinion, an M ideal social state, 'where every mem- M bcr of the community is a toiler and H all arc prosperous, peaceful and c6n- H vtcyt. fJTlic queen bec is sofc mother of H the race. 'All life from the egg,' that H great ibiological axiom, is exemplified H in the hive. The queen mother pass- H ing rapidly from comb to comb, places H a single egg in each selected cell, lay- H ing the inconceivable number of 3000 H to 4000 in 24 hours. This labor rep- H resents in a single day the exp-endi- M turc of physical substance equal to M two and one-half times the weight of M her ibody. Consequently she does not ' M even feed herself, being always ac- M companicd by a devoted group of M maids of honor, worker bees, whose M office it is to bring in profusion the JJk choicest predigested food to their fl ruler. Not the least of the wonder- M ful power of the queen is that of pre- M determining the sex of the offspring H which shall result from cggs precise- M ly alike, . under the microscope, but fl which, in turn, may eventuate in. a fl worker, drone . or queen, as their H mother may elect." H |
