BEE-spoke-data/bees-v0 huggingface dataset:
Now, it must be obvious to the most casual reader that the bee has played the imperative part in the production of these fruits. Nothing else could have accomplished it so effectively and with such beneficial results as the little busy bec. Other insects live on honey and pollen, but no other insect is endowed with the instincts of social bees. Bees work so systematically in cross-pollenisation. They make no mistakes. They will carry pollen from variety to variety, and sometimes from species to species, but not from order to order. After a foraging excursion they are never seen to return to the live with different varieties of pollen on their bodies. In examining a cell of pollen in the live, each stratum is seen to belong to distinct species of the vegetable kingdom (not varieties). With other insects that only feed on pollen grains, they consume it on the another whereon they alight. It is for immediate consumption for each one's present wants. Where other insects visit one blossom, bees will visit a hundred. Watch a butterfly on a flower and compare its actions with the rapid movements of a bee, and judge for yourself which is the better worker of the two. You must bear in mind that in early spring, flowers, and especially fruit blossoms, mature rapidly. Of the essential organs the anthers in most cases come to perfection first, and are the first to die. The pollen is distributed in a very few hours, and its vitality in most instances is short-lived. The pistil with stigma and its carpels are very delicate organisms, therefore liable to all kinds of accidents. When we remember the chief characteristics of the stigma, it will be seen that a dust storm is capable of clogging it, and thus prevent fructification. A dust storm in early spring has a deal to answer for in the failure of fruit crops; so has heavy rain, wind, or anything else that may bruise these very delicate portions of the flower. From this will be seen the imperative necessity for some rapidly-moving agent to convey the perishable pollen to the highly-sensitive stigma. The numerical strength of these agents must be in proportion to the quantity of work they are expected to do, or the areas under fruit culture they are to visit. If bee-keepers and their bees were banished from Australia there would be fruit, but in what quantities! I have referred elsewhere to the nuschief done by butterflies and some other insects, but no such mischief ever follows in the wake of the bee. Fertilisation by agents other than bees would be sufficient to perpetuate species of fruits, and occasionally to produce varieties; but to fertilise heavy crops sufficient to feed mankind they are too inactive, and the mature insects numerically too weak. If adult butterflies, &c., were equal in number to adult bees a famine would follow in the track of their larvae as disastrous as that caused by the armies of locusts that have been known to sweep over the Holy Land in times past. Numerous insectivorous birds and other animals almost live exclusively on insects, their eggs and larvae, and thus their injuricus ravages are somewhat checked.
How wonderfully has Nature protected this invaluable insect, the bee--valuable not as a honey-storer, but as a fruit-producer. Practically the adult bee has no enemy, if we except the wood swallow, and in the egg and larval stages its home is almost impregnable to invaders. Of course, like the human family and other animals, it is liable to the "'ills that flesh is heir to." In a state of nature bee ova and larva have one arch enemy--the bee moth--and it is as well it should be so. Bees in a state of nature are a great drawback to bee-keepers. The honey, when obtained, is a fourth-rate quality owing to the quantity of foreign matter mixed through it. That same honey, if stored in the frames of the lives of practical bee-keepers, would be worth four times as much as when obtained as bush honey. But this is a digression. To the careful bee-keeper, enemies, not diseases, to the eggs, larva, and young bees are rarely known. The bee-keeper having his stock under control can, with the greatest ease, regulate the supply and demand.
No district can be overstocked with bees, if we regard them as fruit-fertilisers only, but as honey-gatherers it is another matter. The greater number of bees kept in au orchard or fruit district the more rapidly is fertilisation carried on. Once the bee has carried the pollen to the pistil, the act of fructification being successful, the development of the fruit is assured--the fruit has _set_. \(\lambda\) few days after the bloom of the trees has disappeared the infant fruit can be seen in the early stages of growth. Standing near an apple, orange, or other tree, when the fruit is in its earliest stage, and a gentle wind shakes the branches, you will sometimes hear the fruit falling in hundreds, or if the tree is shaken the same results will follow. In walking through an orchard in spring-time young fruit just formed are always seen in greater or less numbers scattered on the ground. The premature falling of these fruits is, generally, the result of imperfect fertilisation, caused either by slight injuries to the stigma or an insufficient number of bees to discharge the duties Nature requires of them, _i.e._, fructification. The same results will follow if the blossoms after polnisation are frost-bitten, or cutting winds, or the conditions of the growth or its development checked. All these and others will prevent the young fruit progressing to maturity. Sometimes the crop of fruit will be too heavy for the tree to carry, _i.e._, the sap is insufficient to supply the young with the uourishment required.
## Chapter 11 Artificial Fertilisation.
"What man has done man can do," is a very wise old saw, or a truism that cannot be disputed ; and what insects have done, in many instances man can do to his advantage and the advantage of his race. These tiny workers are accredited with unfolding and throwing light upon many a discovery, and man is said to have received some valuable and useful hints by noting the methods or the results of some of their habits and constructions. Science is said to have taught us that insects have played no inconsiderable part in the development of the plant world ; how the ocean was the birthplace and cradle of vegetable life, or how the early aquatic forms of it developed their terrestrial representatives, and these again from the lower forms of fruit and grain to the highest types we now enjoy. Whether it was by those disputable points "spontaneous generation" or evolution from'mere specks of green jelly" seen floating in the sea, and the variations, ensuing from their battling and struggling for life, and the "survival of the fittest,' or the ones naturally selected and taken by man under his care and guardianship, matters not, as far as the power we now have in producing variations in the vegetable kingdom, and from these selecting the ones that will administer most to our medicinal and dietary wants, or those having ornamental colours and forms to please the eye and decorate our surroundings, making life worth living, is immaterial to this portion of our subject.
That the bee is, by the part she plays in fertilisation, our greatest fruit-producer, must be conceded by those who have looked into the subject, and she is such an absolute adjunct to the orchardist and others, that to interfere with the bee-keeper would be suicidal to all who are engaged in the reproduction of vegetable life.
I have mentioned that bees have been accredited with the destruction of some of our choiecest annual vegetables by inoculation, and that, to a certain extent, they are guilty ; but the want of knowledge in men who are engaged in the work of supplying or cultivating such vegetables is the true cause of the disappearance or injury to the varieties referred to. I have said the inoculation of annals, for it is immaterial how the fruits and seeds of trees and such-like that are reproduced by grafting, budding, cuttings, offsets, etc., are inoculated or cross-pollenised, because the immediate fruit or flower is in no way improved or injured by it.
Cross-pollenisation does not show itself in the fruit or flower that has been so fertilised, but in the plant that is produced from that cross-pollenisation. You may discern an egg that has been laid by a Cochin hen that is running in a yard of mixed fowls by its colour, but from the egg you cannot tell what the cross-bred chick will be ; that will only show itself in the progeny resulting from the crossing. So it is in cross-pollenisation-- the blossom or fruit does not show it, but the crossing is seen in the succeeding generation.
The way bees transfer the pollen grains from the anther to the stigma has been already described, and the simplicity of the method must be apparent to all.
The action of conveying pollen from place to place is in no way injurious, neither does the instrument used interfere with its vitality. An artificial instrument is as useful to convey it from flower to flower as a natural one, and the action would produce the same result. We have seen that pollen removed from the male flower and placed on the receptive organ of a female flower produce fertile fruit. In members of the pumpkin family the sexual flowers are situated on different parts of the same plant, and the sexuality of the blossom is very readily distinguished. Taking that class of plant for our model, let us see how easily artificial fertilisation can be accomplished. The first step will be to secure in both sexual flowers immunity from visits of bees and other insects. To do this, if the same strain of pumpkin, &c., is to be retained, select two blossoms (male and female) on the same vine whilst in bud form--that is, some days before the flower opens. Enclose them with fine mosquito netting. Gauze-wire is better, because it cannot come into close contact with the opening flower. Care must be taken that the netting is sufficiently large to permit the full expansion of the flower. When the essential organs are mature--that is, in the case of the male flower, when the pollen comes away freely with the instrument used in its removal; and in the female when the central organ has a viscid appearance--remove the net covering from the male bloom first, and with a soft downy feather, or, better still, a small camel-hair pencil (brush), gently brush over the essential organ. If the instrument used be dark in colour it will be noted that a quantity of yellow dust (pollen) is adhering to it. Carry the brush gently to the the female flower, remove its covering also, and soitly apply the brush with its pollen to its central organ. As soon as the operation is completed be sure to re-cover the bloom that has been artificially fertilised. Toensure male and female bloom maturing at the same time it is necessary that male buds in various stages of development be selected and treated as above described.
The imperative necessity of artificially fertilising cucumbers, &c., or fruits that are grown under glass or indoor gardens, has long been recognised. In colder latitudes, where early cucumbers, melons, &c., are at a premium, the first morning duty of the man in charge is, as soon as the sun is sufficiently high, to go the rounds of his foreing-pits to overhaul the vines therein, note every female blossom, and taking a male flower in his hand, dust the pollen from it to the stigma of the receptive bloom. Every stigma so treated is morally certain to produce a fruit. But every one neglected is certain to be a failure as far as the production of a fruit is concerned.
What has been said in relation to pumpkin-fertilisation holds good with every other flower that is fertilised by insect agency, only the smaller the flower the greater care must be exercised, and the more patience necessary to ensure successful results. One fact must always be remembered--every seed requires a grain of pollen to ensure a plant from the seed sown; therefore be not parsimonious in the application of pollen, and also remember 'enough is as good as a least.' The care necessary is to apply the brush with its pollen to the receptive organ with as soft and gentle touch as possible.
When hybridisation or cross-fertilisation is required, the same methods must be followed as in the case of pollenising from one variety to that of the same; only whatever species or varieties it is proposed to cross for the reproduction of something new, the selection of the sexes, _i.e._, the stameniferous and pistiliferous, must be free from disease, vegetable blights, or parasites of every kind. The pollen from the author must be removed from the one species or variety to the stigmatic portion of the one it is desired to hybridise, and _vier versa_. Nevertheless the results form these crossings are often more successful than where this interchange is not used. The constitution in the sexes of two plants greatly differ; the pollen-bearing essential organs in one plant being far more vigorous than in that of another; and the same differences are met with in the receptive organs of distinct species or varieties.
If hemaphrodite or bisexual blooms are to receive cross-pollenisation, they too must be guarded from the action of insects. The operation is a very delicate one. The flower-buds selected from which to transfer the pollen must be carefully watched, and as the anthers develop they must be lightly removed without injuring the stigma in the slightest degree, a finely-pointed pair of scissors being used for the purpose. Stannens, as a rule, develop earlier than the pistil.
The pollenisation of double flowers or blossoms is another delicate work, and needs extra patience. The extra number of petals in these is the result of abnormal treatment, which causes the stannens or pistil, and sometimes both, to fall back to flattened leaves.
Botanically speaking, all flowers are modified leaves. When the stannens only have undergone this transformation it is possible to obtain seeds from double blossoms. The petals are removed in the same manner as the anthers from bisexual flowers, and the result is often effective, _i.e._, fertile seeds are produced. Of course, the anthers from a single or semi-double flower supply the pollen; but where both stannens and pistil have undergone the transformation to petals, perpetuation by seeds is altogether out of the question. The reason is very patent--there are no organs of reproduction.
It will need a deal of patience and experience to be successful in the more delicate operations named, and the results will be very disappointing, for, as a rule, not one seed in a thousand or more will be an improvement on the original. Now-a-days the plant world has a tendency to go back to some earlier form.
These final remarks do not apply to the cultivation of pumpkins, melons, cucumbers, &c. The method of artificial fertilisation described will always ensure the best strains of them pure for years to come. To keep any choice strain in health and good heart, a pollen-bearing bloom of the same strain should occasionally be introduced from another district; a plant or seed would be better if the desired strain had also been secured by artificial means. Such plants should be grown away from the main crop, and the anthers and pistils used for reproductive purposes carefully guarded from any chance of the pollen from an undesirable strain being conveyed to the stigma of the plants to be used for seed purposes.
The pollen in all cases contains the cells of life, and ovaries in the pistilate blooms contain the cells of matter. It is the union of these two cells, that of life and that of matter, which produces fertile seeds.
Remember, in selecting for cross-pollenisation purposes, natural orders cannot be used to produce new or fresh orders; nor genus with genus to produce new genera. Species with species will sometimes produce hybrids, but the result is that these mules are seldom capable of being reproduced from seeds, and when such is the case, they die out after one or two generations of sickly vitality. Nevertheless, hybrids so produced can be perpetuated by grafting, budding, &e. Hybrid annual seedlings seldom last for more than one season. Nature has always a tendency to revert to the original form from whence it sprung. In the ages gone by, whatever may have been the natural law as it regards the "development of species," the law now, in these later times, appears to have been repealed, not only in that of species, but even largely in that of varieties. Hybrids and varieties, both in the vegetable and animal kingdom, when removed from the fostering care of man, degenerate gradually but surely to the prototypes from whence they came.
I notice that I have used the terms "natural orders" to produce new orders, "genus" to produce genera, &c.; this may not be equally clear to all readers. But let us take an illustration from every-day poultry-yard life. Everyone engaged in it knows it is utterly impossible to obtain a hybrid between a duck and a fowl; while a hybrid between a Muscovy and an Aylesbury, or a Pekin duck, are of frequent occurrence, but these mules so produced are never reproductive amongst themselves, because the Aylesbury is a different species to that of the Muscovy. Again, if an Aylesbury duck be crossed with a Rouen, the cross-bred descendants are as reproductive among themselves as their parents would be among members of their own family because they are varieties of the same species. These same rules apply equally well to members of the plant world.
I have used the term bees (_Apldate_) frequently to indicate any member of that extensive family, but all or every variety of bee although both honey and pollen-gatherers, are not capable of gene ral fertilisation. It is only the most highly developed bees (humble bees and honey bees) that are furnished with apparatus suitable for collecting and carrying pollen from flowers of _all_ forms or designs. Mason bees and leaf cutters (_Osmia_ and _Megnerhile_) have the ventral surface of the abdomen furnished with long stiff retroverted hairs. These hairs by pointing the "wrong" way brush the pollen from the authers as the insects pass in and out of the bloom. Grains of pollen become entangled among them, and by this means they are transported elsewhere; the hairs on the abdomen of such insects are beautifully adapted for the fertilisation of flowers having a broad and flat corolla, and the reproductive organs being protuberant or conspicuous. If the female organ be hidden low down in the long narrow tube that some blossoms possess, such as clover, etc., they are utterly incapable of performing the uniting ceremony required to produce a fertile seed.
If the hinder legs of one of the hairy bees, a young one especially, because they are more furry than the older ones, be closely examined when returning home, it will be noted that they are thickly bespangled with grains of pollen, to be afterwards transferred to the pollen baskets; it is these stray grains of pollen attached to the hairs that are utilised in pollinating the receptive organs of blossoms. The hairs on the hinder eggs of one of the humble bees (_Bombus terrestris_), the arrangement of the pollen-gathering hairs, are carried out with greater perfection, but the hairs are distributed in the same regular manner as in the hairy bee already referred to. In the ordinary honey bee (_4nis mellifier_), the pollen-collecting hairs are much better adapted to their designed use than is the case with the two former. The hairs on the tarsus of the legs are arranged, not in the irregular way as is the case in that of the humble bee, but in eight or nine regular rows. This regularity of the arrangement of the hairs of the pollen-brush enables our domesticated bee to brush the grains of pollen from the anthers far more effectively than is the case with any member of the whole species. Whilst she is at work on the flowers, and also in mid-air, she is constantly transferring those grains to the pollen baskets, but _all_ are not stored therein; some escape, and it is these escapees that do the work of fertilisation.
I think I have poined out clearly that there is no insect so highly developed for carrying the imperatively essential pollen from flower to flower as the hive-bees. Their intelligence, their energy, their social habits, and the ease with which they are kept under control stamp them at once as no mean ally to the filler of the soil. The practical bee-keeper in any district is a confederate that should be welcome to all. The indiscriminate destruction of native honey-producing flora should be carefully avoided, because most of the plants that I have referred to in these articles are exotics, and these as a rule bloom in the early spring, and the pollen and honey obtained therefrom is used in the spring and summer for the raising of young brood. The stores gathered from indigenous summer and autumn flowers are to carry them over the severity of the winter. If there be not sufficient storage when the cold and wet season sets in to carry them through till springtime it will cause an insufficiency of bees to do the work Nature has assigned for them, and the result will be a lesser ingathering of the fruits of the tillers' labours. Landowners and others cannot have the remotest idea of the mischief they are doing to the vegetable kingdom, and therefore to mankind, by the wholesale destruction of our native flora. If these are wholly, or nearly wholly, cleared from the land to the extent of giving insufficient winter storage for our bees so as to decimate them to the extent of their numerical inability to carry on the necessary work of fertilisation, the result will be more disastrous than droughs or floods to our fruit trees, because these would cease to yield their crops.
The sons of our agricultrists and others engaged on the land are instructed in pruning. grafting, budding, and other concomitant adjuncts for obtaining a living from the soil, but none of these are more necessary than an acquaintance with bee-management--the practical part of it at least. Apart from the profits from the sale of the honey, or that used in the home (there is no food more healthy and invigorating), the presence of bees on a homesetead are as necessary as the implements of husbandry, may indeed more so.
There is yet another phase of this subject I intend to deal with. I have confined myself to the influence of bees on fruits ; here I intend dealing with them as florists.
It has been advocated by the very highest scientific authorities for the Darwinian theory of the development of species in the vegetable kingdom, that colours and perfune of flowers have been produced chiefly, if not entirely, by the visitation of bees and other insects--that our brightest coloured flowers have been developed from progenitors of inconspicuous tints, and the highly attractive shades of the blooms of to-day are the result of the showy character of, as regards colour, a less-favoured earlier race. The same is also said to be the reason of our highly-perfunedblossoms; and these two qualities of flowers--colour and perfume--remain dominant as attractive agents to insects. It is further said that the development of colour and perfume has had the effect of educating the visual and olfactory nerves of these insects (bees) in their search for flowers of particular colour or perfume to supply them with their daily bread, whilst they pass over those of a less gaudy colouring unheeding. Again, that the markings in the throat or tube of other flowers act as finger-posts or guide-marks to point the bees in the direction they should take to discover where the nectar is situated that contains their food supply. (See "_The Story of the Plants,_" by Grant Allen; "_Cross and Self-Fretiliarity,_" by Darwin and others.)
I am not going to attempt to prove that bees have not had an influence on the plant world; I have already acknowledge it elsewhere. Neither am I going to try to disprove that they are not cognisauty of both colour and perfume; but that some colours and some perfumes are more attractive to bees than certain others does not in any way accord with my experience and years of observation.