Charlevoix county herald., 1909-02-13

Give the bee chance, and it will
literally break the boughs of your
trees with the weight of fruit"
Frank c. Odell of Lincoln, Neb, bee
master, who gave series of demon
STATIONS with $4,000 bees at the Ma
tonal Apple show in Spokane, made
the foregoing observation in the
course of an interview, discussing bee
keeping and scientific agriculture and
fruit growing. He said:
The bee is the expert assistant Of
the horticulturist and the farmer. So
indispensable are its functions in the
pollination Of fruits, vegetables, cereals
and grasses that its activities may be
said to lie at the foundation OF all sue
cessful agriculture. Nature has or
dained enc supreme law, that OF crea-
ton, the rerpetuation of the race type.
This law, universal in its application
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 box, devised by nature TO pro-
tect the seeds within from injury and
render it susceptible OF termination
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 10 the flowers specifically 10 gath
er pollen, literally by the carload, in
the hairy baskets On its legs, hasten
ing from bloom to bloCm, rolling and
packing and literally rioiing in the
golden dust, pregnant with the micro
scopic germs of plant life, until the
golden pellets are packed away in its
hair baskets, to be carried 10 the
hive fer storage as All Indispensable
portion of tho food Of its young dur
ing the winter months TO come.
1T requires no expert knowledge to
comprehend how perfectly the bee thus
performs the Office of pollination. In
deed, it is natures chief agent in this
indispensable work. No seed, no
fruit. is the universal law. Here is the
only insect useful in all its habits hav-
ing a fixed habitation accessible to
man. dependent upon the pollen Of
every variety of flower as an in
dispensablc portion of the food Of it's
young, and going to the bloom spe-
officially to gather that pollen. thus
making possible the marvellous fruit
crops in Washington and the Pacific
northwest. That is why | say, give
the bee a chance, and ii will literally
break the boughs Of your trees with
the weight of fruit.
"Delve into the realm Of applied
mechanics or structural engineering,
and your search is incomplete until a
lesson is conned from the structure
of the honeycomb with its marvellous
strength as compared with the fragile
nature of its fabric. No more marvel
Gus structure exists among the
myriad marvellous works of nature.
This waXen fabric, derived primarily
from liquid honey converted into wax
in that marvellous laboratory of the
bee, formed by some mysterious in
stinct or intelligence into the very
form of all others designed for econ
omy of materials, space and extremity
of strength, passes beyond the meas
ure of human skill in its perfection.
Somewhere between 1744 and 1868
1t was discovered that wax is produced
between the plates on the lower side
of the worker bees abdomen. 1t was
John Hunter, the celebrated anatomist,
who discovered just how the bees Sc
crete wax. and thereby settled a vexed
question. He communicated his dis
covery in a paper read to the Royal
Society of London, February 20, 1893.
Wax is produced at the will OF the
bee. and when called for by the neces-
sity Of the hive. The wax-producing
bees obtain a somewhat higher tenn
perature, usually by close clustering,
though they sometimes hang in slen-
der festoons and chains.
Wax is not chemically fat or
glyceride, and those who have called
1t the fat of bees have grossly erred ;
yet 1t is nearly allied to the fats in
atomic constitution, and the physio-
logical conditions favoring the forma-
ton OF one are curiously similar to
those aiding In the production of the
other. We put our poultry up to fat
in confinement. with part light; to Sc
cure bodily inactivity We keep warm
and feed highly. Our bees. under ma
lures teaching, put themselves up to
yield wax under confttions so parallel
that the suitability or the fattening
coop is indicated.
"Chesire in his Investigations says
that on the inner side of the eight
nlateg lining the lower side OF the alb.