fruit for the sake of the juices. This was the special complaint of grape-growers. Investigations have proved that bees never puncture the rind of ripe fruit, although they sometimes are tempted to sip the oozing juices, after the rind is broken through some other agency.
Even before the fruit-bloom the willows offer a feast to break the fast of the hungry swarms. Half the winter the pussy-willow stands waiting in her furs to be ready with her grist of pollen, so that the bees may make bread during the first warm days of spring. The willows burned their bridges behind them eons ago and depend almost entirely upon the bees for fertilisation, since they are diœcious. Some apiarists have claimed that their bees get no nectar from certain species of willow; but this could hardly be so if trees of both sexes were present in a locality; for the staminate flowers offer pollen and the pistillate flowers give nectar to induce the bees to fetch and carry for them.
The maples are not much behind the willows in offering the bees food after their winter fast. The bloom of the red maple is regarded by most bee-keepers as permission from Spring to bring out the bee-hives from the cellar and tenements. All our common species of maple are very much visited by the bees.
The locusts often yield large crops of honey, although they vary with the seasons in this respect. Honey-locust, when in bloom, is covered with bees.
The tulip tree is one of the most beautiful of our
