A prominent wine-grower in this country, told me, about a year ago, that he did not want bees in his neighborhood as he found they injured his grape crop. As I have a small grapery, of about a hundred plants, between the rows of which I find shelter for about 20 colonies of bees, I determined to observe if his theory was correct, for I was loth to give up either. If any fruit crop could be injured by the visit of bees, mine is surely the one. The result of one season's close observation has convinced me: 1st. That bees promote rather than injure the foundations of fruit buds, because the bunches on my vines were full, with better developed berries, than those produced on vines less exposed to their visits, and my peach and cherry trees were as fairly loaded with fruit as they well could be. 2nd. That in the fall bees only visit our ripe berries, that have been sweetened by early frosts, and are very rarely seen on good sound fruit, when the skin is unbroken, and that the loss from this cause is of very little consequence, as the fruit attacked would fall off itself, without the visit of the bees, before gathering. I am wintering 21 colonies, mostly Italians; procured one of Jones' Cyprian queens, but too late in the fall to speak intelligently of the result. They are on summer stands, well sheltered and surrounded with straw, having means of exit, and I think are wintering well, but they have not had a good fly since early in November.
One of my Cyprian queens has upset an established doctrine in bee-science, set at naught all the bee-books, and reversed the old adage which says: “hope long deferred maketh the heart sick.” In the latter part of last season I reared some Cyprian queens from eggs and larvæ, obtained from Mr. Root; they were 7 in number, and were hatched on the 6th, 7th, and 8th days of Sept. The weather being warm and fair they were all fertilized (except one, which never returned from her bridal tour) by the 12th of the month, and a few days later they were all laying except one; that being the finest, brightest-looking queen of the lot, stubbornly refused to commence the duties of a good queen. She was in a strong nucleus which was fed regularly and bountifully, till the hive looked as though the occupants were enjoying a bountiful white clover harvest, but “nary an egg would she lay.”