RED CLOVER SEED

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXX, Issue 4833, 14 April 1936, Page 8

RED CLOVER SEED

HOW THE BEES HELP. It is quite true that, previous to the advent of the humble bee, red clover seed could not be profitably grown in New Zealand, but it is also true that since then the growing of .red clover for a seed crop is not always a success (states a writer in the Christchurch Press). The second growth after a cutting for hay is the most dependable for seed, but if the conditions during the spring and early summer have been unfavourable to the rearing of the main generation of worker humbles, the scarcity of these workers will impair the chances of successful fertilisation of the bloom. It is this generation of workers, too, that rears the final batch composed of queens and drones. The queens are fertilised, ' and hibernate singly. Each one starts a nest of her own in the spring. They are at the mercy of mice, and students of Darwin well remembered his example of a scarcity of cats bringing about a scarcity of red clover. However, there is now another agency which can be -depended on to fertilise the crop. About 30 years ago there were many importations of a superior strain of Italian honey bees, reputed to be capable of working red clover. Since then all the efforts of the commercial beekeepers have been concentrated on breeding this strain, which was remarkable for its honey-gathering qualities. The Italians were reputed to have a longer tongue, but it is more likely that their greater energy induced them to have a try at the nectar which was just out of reach in the red clover. They will do this only at the end of the summer, and they work more readily on a medium or short growth than on a rank one. I have examined a ripe crop where there were no hive bees within miles, and the few heads found to contain seed would have two or three seeds instead of the possible 60 to 10 0. The owner did not bother cutting the ( crop. In the same season a crop within half a mile of 80 hives of Italians yielded three bags to the acre, and a crop a mile further on gave less than a bag. In another J season a crowd over the road from the same apiary returned a two-bag yield of seed, which was taken for machine-dressed, while the best yield anywhere else was only one bag to the acre. In two instances where bees from this apiary were put down beside the crops when in full bloom, the yields were increased by a bag an acre over the previous season. Honey bees are less subject to the vagaries of the season and the depredations of mice, because their owners have an interest in them, and for that reason their presence in the neighbourhood makes the growing of red clover for seed more certain than it used to be.