Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1895-01-18
BEE CULTURE
AND ITS RELATIONS TO HORTI-
CULTURE.
Benefits from Bees in the Orchard
During BloOm-Profft In Honey
100 Per Cent.-Increase of Colo.
MES Not Limited.

Thurston County Horticultural Society.
We can name scarcely a pursuit or
an industry within the circle OF mans
endeavor but is intimately related to
and often largely dependent upon
others, and sometimes upon remote
outside influence for its success or
failure. This is most emphatically
true OF bee culture. Dependent, or
independent, We must acknowledge
horticulture as tue first pursuit re-
commended to the first man by the
kindly and Divine Power that brea,hed
into him living soul. He was given
the garden and told to dress and keep
1t, but instead he went gormandizing
and ate one too many apples, and in
laziness and lack of business ability
soon found his nudity, and so his de
generate offspring for six thousand
years have been pinning on fig leaves
to cover their failure. Lest the com.
ing horticulturists should pronounce
us failures, let Us find no fault with
our fathers. We know little or moth.
ing OF Asiatic or European soils, or
climate, or pests; therefore let US not
number ourselves with Byron's SER
want, who knew not what to say. and
so he swore. Nearly all our achieve.
ments and unparalleled success in
agriculture, horticulture, agriculture
and other industries, have been ac-
eomplished within the life time of our
old men, or at most within two centu-
ries last past. The bee, the fowls of
the air, and the animals created before
him, were all varied by the first man,
and nothing was made in vain. 1t is
ours TO find their beauty and their
utility. The same Infinite wisdom
that finished his work by giving to
man an help mate, had already estab-
lished a law OF attraction and a sublime
systems of rewards and punishments,
or as the theologians say law of COM
pensation.
Obedience is life and the penalty or
compensation for disobedience is as
sure as death. Some one who appa-
rently had not been member of the
council in which these laws we're
made, few years ago, took some
American hare or rabbits to Australia.
Destruction of crops and hundreds of
thousands OF dollars paid the penalty,
and the trouble of getting rid of the
rabbits has only begun.
A few years ago, the planters on the
low lands in Louisiana, with great
labor and expense banished the aliiga-
tor, but almost Immediately there
came upon them countless numbers
of smaller animals, almost as danger
GUS and far more destructive. They
are now allowing the alligators to
come back. The honey bee has been
allowed to come back to every section
from which it has been banished by
law. Can you prove that it does not
drive out some pests?
California brought some trees from
Australia and with them the scale.
A naturalist went to Australia, and
found the lady bug living on the scale,
and loving it rs Scotch terrier, loves
mice. AS surely as man was created
and required to dress and tend the
flowers and WAS licensed to eat the
fruit, so surely the honey has followed
and will follow tile man and the gar
den to the end.
Some fourteen years ago, the
orchard products of the United States
alone were worth more than $1,000
600. About that time HARRISON OF
Southern California sold $50 900 worth
of honey from 1900 hives Of bees in
one year.
Australia imported some American
red clover, which proved an entire
failure, as none of it grew any seed.
They imported seed until told to take
along a nest of humble bees, after
which there was no trouble about the
clover, as the bees carried the pollen
from flower to flower and thus fer
tilted it. Italian bees have since
been imported from America and have
proven great blessing by thus fer
tilizing in their search for nectar
countless blossoms, which without
them would not have brought fruit.
A few years ago, bee culture was not
allowed to be carried on in certain
parts of Massachusetts,. The bees
were banished by law, and the next
fruit crops were 80 very much short of
an average that the orchardists who
had driven them away, were the first
to petition for the repeal of the law.
The bees were brought back and the
fruit yield was as good as ever. Dr.
Grant had the Catawba and the Della
ware grape, one very early, the other
very small. He took pollen from one
and fortified the other-result the
Iona. Early cherries bloom very
early and if the weather is very cold
or cloudy, 80 the bees cannot get out,
your cherry crop will he small. Plant
your sugar corn as far as possible from
your yellow Dent, il you wish to keep
the seed pure; then plant a row OF
each side by side and note the result.
The product will be neither. The
pollen on the tassei falls on or is car
ried by the bees or the wind to the
silk of the ear. This is Just the work
the bee does accidentally, it seems, by
having . few grains of pollen on its
feet or body as it leaves q perfect
flower and alights on an imperfect
one which without it would not have
produced fruit. All the leading bee
men who write on this subject seem
to prove very conclusively the benefit
OF having bees in the orchard as the
trees are blooming, and to US it seems
possible for every orchardist to keep
few colonies OF bees. At present
prices, If kept in the Langstroth hive
and properly cared for, they should
pay 200 per cent. on honey alone.
And it is quite certain they are worth
their cost to the owners OF the fruit
trees they visit each year. H. S.
Hickman, Of Illinois. an experienced
bee keeper, in the spring of 1881, had
10 colonies which he increased to 70
and took 1900 pounds of honey from
them November 18th of that year.
He wrote to the American Bee Journal
of Chicago, "The sweet clover is still
in bloom, l owe my success to it,"
And just here let me say if we expect
honey, We must sow honey-plant seed.
AlsiEe clover is good and there is
nothing superior to white clover;
while there are hundred other plants
which if sown and properly cultivated
will pay as well in other ways as in
nectar for the bees.
Thurston county horticulturalists