BEE-spoke-data/bees-v0 huggingface dataset:
During my recent visit to the Okaiawa district I discovered the moth and grubs in three different apariaries a considerable distance apart from each other, so that it may be taken for granted the moth has now established itself in this colony. I have not yet seen it in any other district. In each of the hives where I found the moth the colony was very weak--a long way below the normal strength--which would, no doubt, account for its getting a footing; in no case did I find it in colonies of normal strength. A favourite haunt of the grub is on the top of the frames under the mat, or where there are two mats it will get in between them. They are to be found there chiefly in the daytime, where they apparently hide from the bees, and attack the combs at night; but when the colony becomes very weak the grubs show no such fear and attack the combs at all times.
It is the larvae or grubs of the moth which prove so destructive to the combs, burrowing through them under the protection of strong silken galleries which they spin around themselves secure from the bees as they advance in their work of destruction. Eventually the combs are completely destroyed, and fall, a mass of web and cocoons, to the bottom of the hive (see Plate V.).
Its Habits and Natural History.
The moth itself, which is usually to be seen during warm summer evenings flitting about the hives, watching for an opportunity to lay its eggs within or near the entrances, can readily discover weak colonies, when it does not hesitate to enter the hives, and thus the grubs eventually get a footing, from which they are seldom or never dislodged by the bees.
Mr. Sidney Olliff, Government Entomologist for New South Wales, when writing some time ago on the natural history of this moth, said, "' With us in New South Wales the first brood of moth appears in the early spring, from caterpillars which have passed the winter in a semi-dormant condition within the walls of their silken coverings, and only turned to pupae or chrysalids upon the approach of warm weather. These winter (or hibernating) caterpillars feed very little, and usually confine their wanderings to the silken channels which they have made for themselves before the cool weather sets in. Upon the return of the desired warmth the caterpillars spin a complete cocoon for themselves and turn to the chrysalis stage, and in from ten days to a fortnight the perfect moth appears. The moth then lays its eggs in any convenient spot, such as the sides and bottoms of the frames, on the walls of the hive itself, or on the comb. In each case I have had an opportunity of observing the process, the moth chose the sides of the frames, as near to the brood combs as possible, the young larvae having a decided preference for this comb. The larvae having once made their appearance, which they usually do in from eight to ten days after the laying of the eggs, their growth is exceedingly rapid, the average time before they are ready to assume the chrysalis stage being only some thirty days. The average duration of the chrysalis period is about a fortnight, so it can easily be seen with what great capabilities for rapid reproduction we have to deal. As we have said, the number of generations, or broods, which develop in a season--_i.e._, between early spring and late autumn--varies with locality and climate; but it may be worth while to record that, in my opinion, we have sufficient evidence to prove the existence of four broods in the Sydney district under ordinary circumstances."
The average length of the grub is about lin., and "' when first hatched it is pale yellow with a slightly darker head, and of a greyish flesh-colour when full-grown, with a dark reddish-brown head." The length of the moth is about \(
rac{3}{4}\) in., " has reddish brown-grey forewings, which are distinctly lighter in colour towards the outer or hinder margins."
Remedies.
It has been frequently remarked, and no doubt with a considerable amount of truth, that the moth is only the enemy of the careless beekeeper--intending to convey the idea that with care and attention there need be no fear of it doing damage in the apiary. A colony of bees at its normal strength is practically proof against all its enemies, but the box-hive beekeeper who cannot control his bees has the most to fear from this moth, for when once it gets into a box hive there is no means of getting rid of it without cutting out all the combs, which in such a case would practically mean the destruction of the colony. On the other hand, the up-to-date bekeeper with movable-frame hives, and who follows the golden rule of bekeeping--viz., keeping all colonies strong--has nothing whatever to fear from the moth or any other enemies of the bee.
Italian bees can protect themselves against the large moth better than the common or black bees, therefore on this account alone it is advisable to cultivate these in preference to the others.
Fumigating Combs.
It is not only the combs within the hives that are liable to be attacked by the moth, but they become a prey to the latter wherever they happen to be unprotected. No combs or pieces of combs should be allowed to lie about; when they are of no further service they should be melted into wax at once. Spare combs should always be stored in a place of safety from the moth, and inspected frequently. On the first sign of grubs they should be fumigated, and a few days after should undergo a second fumigation. When there are not many to do they may be suspended in empty hives about lin. apart, and the latter piled one on the other, taking care that the junctions of the boxes are made smoke-tight by pasting a strip of paper round them. The top box of the pile should contain no frames. Into this place an old iron saucepan containing live wood-embers, and on to these throw a couple of handfuls of sulphur, close the cover securely and keep closed for a couple of days. In a large apiary it is best to have a small room fitted up for the purpose. Two or three pounds of sulphur will be sufficient for a large room.
V. APICUURE IN RELATION TO AGRICUATURE.*
The benefits derived by both agriculturists and horticulturists from the labours of the bee are now very generally understood and acknowledged; but still cases do sometimes occur, though rarely, of farmers objecting to the vicinity of an apiary, and complaining of bees as "'trespassers," instead of welcoming them as benefactors.
Are Bees Trespassers?
It is not, perhaps, surprising that at first a man should imagine he was being injured in consequence of bees gathering honey on _his land_, to be stored up elsewhere, and for the use of other parties; he might argue that the honey belonged by right to him, and even jump at the conclusion that there was so much of the _substance of the soil_ taken away every year, and that his land must therefore become impoverished. It is true that if he possessed such an amount of knowledge as might be expected to belong to an intelligent agricultural, working upon rational principles, he should be able, upon reflection, to see that such ideas were entirely groundless. Nevertheless the complaint is sometimes made, in a more or less vague manner, by persons who ought to know better; and even beekeepers appear occasionally to adopt an apologetic tone, arguing that "bees do more good than harm," instead of taking the much higher and only true stand by asserting that bees, while conferring great benefits on agriculture, _do no harm wehatever_, and that the presence of an apiary on or close to his land can be nothing but an airvantage to the agricultural_.
Beneficial Influence of Bees on Agriculture.
We have already in Chapter III. dwelt upon the value of the intervention of bees in the cross-fertilisation of plants, and can here only refer the reader for further information to the works of Sir J. Lubbock and of Darwin. The latter, in his work on "Cross and Self Fertilisation of Plants," gives the strongest evidence as to the beneficial influence of bees upon clover-crops. At page 169, when speaking of the natural order of legununinous plants, to which the clovers belong, he says, "The cross-seedliags have an enormous advantage over the self-fertilised ones when grown together in close competition "; and in Chapter X., page 361, he gives the following details of some experiments, which show the importance of the part played by bees in the process of cross-fertilisation :--
_Trifolium repens_ (White Clover).--Several plants were protected from insects, and the seeds from ten flower-heads on these plants and from ten heads on other plants growing outside the net (which I saw visited by bees) were counted, and the seeds from the latter plants were very nearly ten times as numerous as those from the protected plants. The experiment was repeated in the following year, and twenty protected heads now yielded only a single abortive seed, whilst twenty heads on the plants outside the net (which I saw visited by bees) yielded 2,290 seeds,as calculated by weighing all the seeds and counting the number in a weight of two grains.
_Triifolium pratense_ (Purple Clover).--One hundred flower-heads on plants protected by a net did not produce a single seed, whilst one hundred on plants growing outside (which were visited by bees) yielded 68 grains weight of seed; and as eighty seeds weighed 2 grains the hundred heads must have yielded 2,720 seeds.
Here we have satisfactory proof that the effect of cross-fertilisation brought about by bees upon the clovers and other plants growing in meadows and pasture lands is the certain production of a large number of vigorous seeds, as compared with the chance only of a few and weak seeds if self-fertilisation were to be depended upon. In the case of meadow-cultivation it enables the farmer to raise seed for his own use or for sale, instead of having to purchase it, while at the same time the nutritious quality of the hay is, as we shall see further on, improved during the process of ripening the seed. In the case of pasture lands, such of those vigorous seeds as are allowed to come to maturity and to fall in the field will send up plants of a stronger growth to take the place of others that may have died out, or to fill up hitherto-unoccupied spaces, thus tending to cause a constant renewal and strengthening of the pasture. The agricultural himself should be the best judge of the value of such effects.
The beneficial effect of the bees' visits to fruit-trees has been well illustrated by Mr. Cheshire in the pages of the _British Bee Journal_, and by Professor Cook in his article upon " Honey Bees and Horticulture " in the _American Apiculturalist_. In fact, even those who complain of bees cannot deny the services they render; what they contest is the assertion that _bees do no harm_.
Can Bees harm the Soil or the Crops?
is then the question to be considered. The agricultural may say, "Granting that the visits of bees may be serviceable to me in the fertilisation of my fruit or my clover, how will you prove that I am not obliged to pay too.high a price for such services?" For the answer to such a question one must fall back upon the researches of the agricultural chemist, which will furnish satisfactory evidence to establish the two following facts : First, that saccharine matter, even when assimilated aud retained within the body of a plant, is not one of the secretions of vegetable life which can in any way tend to exhaust the soil, being made up of constituents which are furnished everywhere in superabundance by the atmosphere and rain-water, and not containing any of the mineral or organic substances supplied by the soil or by the manures used in agriculture; and, secondly, that in the form in which it is appropriated by bees, either from the nectaries of flowers or as honeydew from the leaves, it no longer constitutes a part of the plant, but is in fact an excrement, thrown off as superfluous, which if not collected by the bee and by its means made available for the use of man would either be devoured by other insects which do not store honey, or be resolved into its original elements and dissipated in the air.
The foregoing statements can be supported by reference to authorities which can leave no doubt as to their correctness--namely, Sir Humphrey Davy in his "Elements of Agricultural Chemistry," written more than fifty years ago, and Professor Liebig in his " Chemistry in its Application to Agriculture and Physiology," written some ten years later, and the English version of which is edited by Dr. Lyon Playfair and Professor Gregory. These works, which may be said to form the foundation of a rational system of agriculture, were written with that object alone in view, and the passages about to be quoted were not intended to support any theory in favour of bee-culture or otherwise; they deal simply with scientific truths which the layman can safely follow and accept as true upon such undeniable authority, although he may be incapable himself of following up the processes which have led to their discovery or which prove their correctness.
Sackarine Matter of Plants not derived from the Soil. Liebig, when describing the chemical processes connected with the nutrition of plants, informs us (at page 4) that--
There are two great classes into which ail vegetable products may be arranged. The first of these contain nitrogen; in the last this element is absent. The compounds destitute of nitrogen may be divided into those in which oxygen form a constituent (starch, lignine, &c.) and those into which it does not enter (oils of turpentine, lemon, &c.)
And at page 141 that--
Sugar and starch do not contain nitrogen; they exist in the plants in a free state, and are never combined with salts or with alkaline bases. They are compounds formed from the carbon of the carbonic acid and the elements of water (oxygen and hydrogen).
Sir Humphrey Davy had already stated that, " according to the latest experiments of Gay Lussac and Thenard, sugar consists of 42\(\cdot\)47 per cent. of carbon and 57\(\cdot\)23 per cent. of water and its constituents." Now, Liebig in several parts of his work shows that the carbon in sugar and all vegetable products is obtained from carbonic acid in the atmosphere; and that " plants do not exhaust the carbon of the soil in the normal condition of their growth; on the contrary, they add to its quantity."Derived from the Atmosphere and Rain-water.
The same authority shows that the oxygen and hydrogen in these products are derived from the atmosphere and from rain-water; and that it is only the products containing nitrogen (such as gluten or albumen in the seeds or grains), and those containing mineral matter (silex, lime, aluminium, &c.), which take away from the soil those substances that are required to be returned to it in the shape of manures. The saccharine matter once it is secreted by the plant and separated from it is even useless as a manure. Liebig says on this head, page 21,--
The most important function in the life of plants, or, in other words, in their assimilation of carbon, is the separation--we might almost say the generation--of oxygen. No matter can be considered as nutritious or as necessary to the growth of plants which possesses a composition either similar to or identical with theirs, because the assimilation of such a substance could be effected without the exercise of this function. The reverse is the case in the nutrition of animals. Hence such substances as sugar, starch, and gum, themselves the products of plants, cannot be adapted for assimilation; and this is rendered certain by the experiments of vegetable physiologists, who have shown that aqueous solutions of these bodies are imbibed by the roots of plants and carried to all parts of their structure, but are not assimilated; they cannot therefore be employed in their nutrition.
Nectar of Plants intended to attract Insects.
The secretion of saccharine matter in the nectaries of flowers is shown to be one of the normal functions of the plant, taking place at the season when it is desirable to attract the visits of insects for the purposes of its fertilisation. It may then be fairly asserted that the insect when it carries off the honey from any blossom it has visited is merely taking with it the fee or reward provided by nature for that special service.
Sometimes thrown off as superfluous.
There are, however, occasions when considerable quantities of such matter are thrown off or exuded by the leaves, which effect is taken to indicate an abnormal or unhealthy condition of the plant. At pages 106 and 107 of Liebig's book (speaking of an experiment made to induce the rising sap of a maple-tree to dissolve raw sugar applied through a hole cut in the bark) he shows (in a passage already quoted at page 86) that,--
When a sufficient quantity of nitrogen is not present to aid in the assimilation of the substances destitute of it, these substances will be separated as excrements from the bark, roots, leaves, and branchesIn a note to this last paragraph we are told that--
Langlois has lately observed, during the dry summer of 1842, that the leaves of the linden-tree became covered with a thick and sweet liquid in such quantities that for several hours of the day it ran off the leaves like drops of rain. Many kilograms might have been collected from a moderate-sized linden-tree.
And further on, at page 1+1, he says,--
In a hot summer, when the deficiency of moisture prevents the absorption of alkalies, we observe the leaves of the lime-tree, and of other trees, covered with a thick liquid containing a large quantity of sugar; the carbon of the sugar must without doubt be obtained from the carbonic acid of the air. The generation of the sugar takes place in the leaves, and all the constituents of the leaves, including the alkalies and alkaline earths, must participate in effecting its formation. Sugar does not exude from the leaves in moist seasons, and this leads us to conjecture that the carbon which appeared as sugar in the former case would have been applied in the formation of other constituents of the tree in the event of its having had a free and unimpeded circulation.
These quotations will probably be considered sufficient to justify the assertion that the gathering of the honey from plants can in no possible way tend to exhaust the soil, or affect its fertility. There is no difference of opinion amongst scientific men as to the sources from which the saccharine matter of plants is derived. Since Liebig first put forward his views on that subject, as well as with regard to the sources from which the plants derive their nitrogen, the principles of agricultural chemistry have been studied by the most eminent chemists, some of whom combated the views of Liebig on this latter point (the source of nitrogen and its compounds), and Liebig himself seems to have modified his views on that point; but there has been no difference of opinion about the saccharine matter, as to which Liebig's doctrine will be found given unaltered in the latest colonial work on the subject, MacIvor's "Chemistry of Agriculture," published at Melbourne a few years ago.
Superfluous Nectar evaporated IF NOT taken by Insects.
That the nutritive quality of the plants in any growing crop is not diminished by the abstraction of honey from their blossoms would appear to be evident from the fact already referred to, that those plants have actually thrown off the honey from the _superfluity_ of their saccharine juices, as a matter which they could no longer assimilate. There would appear, on the other hand, to be good reason to believe that the plants themselves become daily _more_ nutritive during the period of their giving off honey--that is, from the time of flowering to that of ripening their seeds. This is a point upon which, I believe, all agricultural chemists are not quite agreed, but the testimony of Sir H. Davy is very strong in favour of it. Inthe appendix to his work already quoted, he gives the results of experiments made conjointly by himself and Mr. Sinclair, the gardener to the Duke of Bedford, upon nearly a hundred different varieties of grasses and clovers. These were grown carefully in small plots of ground as nearly as possible equal in size and quality; equal weights of the dried produce of each cut at different periods, especially at the time of flowering and at that of ripened seeds, were " acted upon by hot water till all their soluble parts were dissolved; the solution was then evaporated to dryness by a gentle heat in a proper stove, and the matter obtained carefully weighed, and the dry extract, supposed to contain the nutritive matter of the plants, was sent for chemical analysis." Sir H. Davy adds his opinion that this " mode of determining the nutritive power of grasses is sufficiently accurate for all the purposes of agricultural investigation." Further on be reports, " In comparing the compositions of the soluble products afforded by different crops from the same grass, I found, in all the trials I made, the largest quantity of truly nutritive matter in the crop cut when the seed was ripe, and the least bitter extract and saline matter, and the most saccharine matter, in proportion to the other ingredients, in the crop cut at the time of flowering." In the instance which he then gives, as an example, the crop cut when the seed had ripened showed 9 per cent. _less_ of sugar, but 18 per cent. more of nucilage and what he terms " truly nutritive matter" than the crop cut at the time of flowering. From this it would follow that during the time a plant is in blossom and throwing off a super-fluity of saccharine matter in the shape of honey the assimilation of true nutritive matter in the plant itself is progressing most favourably. In any case it is clear that the honey, being once exuded, may be taken away by bees or any other insects (as it is evidently intended to be taken) without any injury to the plant, by which it certainly cannot be again taken up, but must be evaporated if left exposed to the sun's heat.
Question as to Grazing-stock.
There is, however, a plea put in by the agricultural on behalf of his grazing-stock, and one which he generally seems to consider unanswerable. He says, " Even if it he admitted that the removal of the honey from my farm is neither exhausting to the soil nor injurious to the plants of the standing crops, still it is so much fattening-matter which might be consumed by my stock if it had not been pilfered by the bees."
Now, it may at once be admitted that honey consists to a great extent of fattening-matter, though it may be allowable to doubt whether in that particular form it is exactly suitable as food for grazing-cattle. Although it is quite true that the saccharine matter assimilated in the body of a plant tends to the formation of fat in the animal which eats and digests that plant, still one may question the propriety of feeding the same animal on pure honey or sugar. We may, however, waive that view of the subject, as we shall shortly see that it is only a question of such homeopatibically small doses as would not be likely to interfere with the digestion of the most delicate grazing-animal, any more than they would considerably increase its weight. Admitting, therefore, that every pound of honey of which the grazing-stock are deprived by bees is a loss to the farmer, and therefore to be looked upon as a set-off to that extent against the benefits conferred by the bees in other ways, it will be necessary to consider to what extent it is possible that such loss may be occasioned.
Quantity of Honey furnished by Pasture Land.