THE BEE AND ITS BUSINESS.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1262, 18 October 1911, Page 11

THE BEE AND ITS BUSINESS.

NOT FHOJI MAETEULIXCK. The allegation that English people eat less honey than any other nation in Ihiropo is certainly a reflection upon our sagacity, tor there aro at least two good reasons why honey should he eaten by everybody provided that a supply is obtainable at' i\ lair price, says a writer in an Jkinglish paper. In tno first place honey is tho best of all sugar loods. Kveryono knows that bees frequent flowers", but it is incorrect to say that they gather honey from the. blossom's which they visit. What tho bee really extracts by "tho aid of its wonderful tongue is tho sweet juice called nectar which the plant secretes. The Bee and the Nectar. Now nectar belongs to the special class of sugars known technically as "sucroses" or cano sugar. The bee sucks up this nectar and deposits it in its crop or honey bag, which is an expansion of the gullet, and from this reccptacle it is disgorged when tho insect returns to tho hive, But ill the short interval it has been altered by admixture with liquids secreted in the mouth and crop of the insect. Its sweetness has been converted from cano sugar into "glucose" or grape sugar. All the sugars of the sucrose group, the products of the sugar cane, tho beetroot, the maple tree, and so on, must be rendered digestible by a process which they undergo in the human stomach that converts them info glucose. But' in honey wo get glucose, or grape sugar, ready prepared, and this is the reason why honey is the best of all sugar foods. It is readily assimilated by the system, and is especially valuable as a restorative aftor prolonged muscular exertion, as it quickly affords a fresh supply of vital force. For children it is one of the best and most palatable sources of food. The second reason why we should eat honey is that by so doing wo encourage bee-keeping, and by encouraging bee-keep-ing we lend important aid to the fruitgrowing industry. j Collecting the Pollen. | It would be difficult to over-estimate the value of bets as fertilising agents in orchards and gardens. A bee visits a flower not only to suck the honey, bat to gather the pollen as well. The worker bee alone engages in this task, and a . given bee nsually visits only ono kind oi : flower during each flight. Moreover, the orgnns of the insect are specially adapted for pollen gathering. Uces collect pollen in the first instance among the hairs of the body and legs—many of these haiTs being specially branched to entanpln the grains. The pollen is then combed out of the hairs by means of rows of short, stiff spines called "pollen combs," which are situated on the inner surface of a segment of the hind leg, the middle legs also assisting in tho operation.

From these combs the pollen is transferred to tho "pollen baskets," or corbiculn, on tho outer surface of each hind ebin. By crossing the logs, the pollen from one set of combs is transferred to the basket of tho opposite !ej?, the spines on the posterior margin of the shin ?crvini' to scrape the pollen from the combs. The bee goce through these actions with tho utmost rapidity and addicss. If we watch a bee that has just left a flower we shall that it hovers in the nil for a few seconds, and those who have-weeptiov ally keen eyesight may detKt that it is makiue swift passes with its less. It is, in fact, removing the pollen from the hairs and packing it info Iho po'Jcn baskets in the manrwr which has just been described. The pollen thus collected is earned to tho hive, where, mixed with honey, it if Used mainly to fe<?d tho young gruiis. Bμ* the Ik?c cannot reach all parts of its body, anil BOine pollen is snre to remain on the hairs and bo carried to another blossom, whore it will probably be transferred tu the stigniatic surface- of tho pistil, when the fruit will be "set." Among the Fruit. Experiments have abundantly proved the value of bees in securing tho proper fertilisation of fruit blossom, and grower who are dissatisfied with the yield of an orchard cannot do bettor than procure .some, hives of bees as a remedy. In.mosi cases observation will show that a p-cc yield is correlated with a scarcity of W<>n the immediate neighbourhood. Not is this true only of apples, pears, and nhims, for the bnsh fruits, such a« gooseberries, currants, and raspberries, are equally dependent upon the assistance of bete or other insects. In proof of this, the result of an exriinent recently carried out by Mr. W. Reid may be cited, A small gooseborry bush which was enveloped in muslin before the blossoms opened, and thus protected from the visits of beer. yieJdrd only six gooseberries, and even theia were probably due to a raspberry beetle which was endow) in the muslin by mistake. Two adjoining bushes of similar size which wore, left open to tho bees that tamo from hives about fifteen yards distant produced respectively 151 and 167 borries. Experiment with black and red currant bushes gave equally striking results in proof of the importance of bees as fertilising ngents.

It is a fact Hint the average yield of honey from a hivo is now far larger than was once the case. This is mainly due to the readiness of the bee to ndopt laboursaving devices. all know that bees storo their honey in hexagonal wax ceJln of their own making. Now wax is focroted by the worker bees and appears as thin plates through the joints of the abdominal armour. But before they are able to produce wax the bees must gorgo themwlvcs with honey. It has been estimated that to produce lib. of wax no less than 13Jlb. of honey must be sacrificed. A German's Idea, To obviate this waste practical beekeepers now supply their hives with comb foundation"—i.e., sheets or pure beeswax stamped by machinery with the ground plan of cells from which tho beos pull out the full extent of tho comb. A German carpenter named llehrin? was the first to conceive (in 1557) tho idea of supplying bees witli machine-mado foundations, but the process of manufac ture has smeo been greatly improved, :