Bees and the Apple Blossom The apple blossom is much
too profuse to give the bees a chance of fertilising more than, say, 5 per cent.; and even with the co-operation of flies and night-flying moths (whose ministrations have probably been under- estimated) the larger part of the blossom will be unvisited at the right season. Then there is the question of rival lures. I sometimes think that the most effective action we can take towards the fertilisation of the apples would be to destroy all the dandelion flowers. Their blazing suns are peculiarly attractive to hive bees, as well as small beetles, and hold a very strong form of honey. This is strange, since few flowers are less in need of the insect. They are even capable, so some enquirers hold, of par- thenogenesis. What a plant it is! It sows itself broadcast. It has the best of all distributing devices. It has a root that makes it a perennial, though it should be only biennial, and it can maintain life under the worst of treatments. I should doubt whether any plant had ever colonised a new country so rapidly as the dandelion some of the orchard districts of North America. Its near cousin, the hawkweed, is said to have a wider range than any other plant.
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