Honeybees and Red CloverAuthor(s): Paul D. HarwoodSource: The Scientific Monthly, Vol. 66, No. 2 (Feb., 1948), pp. 177-178Published by: American Association for the Advancement of ScienceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/19360 .

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COMMENTS AND CRITICISMS 177

prefab would appeal, provided it could be occupied on weekly payments smaller than those required for a shack or a tenement in the slums.

However, this hope for a lower level of cost does not appear to be warranted. All the prefab plans today attack the shell of the house as their basic premise. They grope for novelty in wall construc- tion. I have before me a detailed itemization of every cost involved in the building of my house and I find that the total of all costs pertaining to the exterior walls, which are sixteen inches thick of masonry, insulation, and interior paneling, is just 18 percent of the total house cost. Frame construc- tion in comparable houses represents only 14 per- cent. Would a saving of even one-half these figures warrant the complete destruction of a character and beauty universally appreciated? Will ivy cling to, or even a rambler rose cover, the "sanitary baked-on enamel" of walls that any handy man can erect with nothing but a screw driver?

It is true that a house costs much more today, even comparatively, than it did a generation ago. That is largely because it has already ceased to be a simple shell. Bathrooms cost more than privies; wiring, oil burners, and weather stripping are new expenses. But to advance the claim that these de- sirable features in a single house on a private lot should be made available to the lowest income groups is simply to repeat a hypnotic fantasy. However, these groups do find their modern housing in multiple units. In fact, the apartment house answers the needs of not only low-income families but also of thousands of others who, because of circumstances, do not find the single house expedient. Let the prefab house promoters realize that their costs cannot possibly rival- the economies of the well- planned multiple unit.

While it is evident that I find little sense or reason in Mr. Larson's article, I do recognize the under- lying need for improvement in housing economics just as in other fields. But I submit that this im- provement is a process already under way in a logical manner quite consistent with our civilization. To blame the industry for a housing shortage makes even less sense tharl to blame General Motors be- cause I do not own a new Cadillac.

The housing industry is not technologically back- ward. On the contrary, it has made prefabrication and assembly-line production so common that more people than ever aspire to housing luxuries un- dreamed of a few years ago. Today's carpenter is derided for his lack of skill, but consider that he no longer has the nlecessity for developing true journeyman status. His doors and windows, care- fully packaged with their frames, arrive complete from the assembly line. HIis cabinets, millwork, flooring, stairs, mantels, and bookshelves are all out of the catalogue. The plumbing, lheating, and light- ing fixtures are all factory-made. Still larger assemblies are already common, such as kitchen and bathroom units. To deliver at least these two rooms as complete assemblies is but a step and is on the way. This indeed is economic prefabrication.

Were our lending institutions themselves better

educated in sound design rather than in quick fi- nancing of nondescript and uninspired "housing," our twenty-five-year-old structures would radiate even increased charm instead of the dejection of the slum. After all, it takes twenty-five years to achieve fully landscaped grounds. The depreciation of good houses is more apt to be forced by changed sur- roundings than physical decrepitude, but as this normal reduction in relative value occurs, these houses retain much that is basically good and become available to those who cannot afford new construc- tion. The average ignorant banker, schooled only in the fine art of foreclosure, lends most of his money on houses to which competent architectural design has never been applied. He thus fosters the blight miscalled obsolescence.

The new type of house that Mr. Larson mentions as a possible goal, one which blends its indoors with outside space, is a delightful objective, but to build even two alike would require two identical landscapes.

Let these charlatans at housing turn their re- sources toward (1) better design for more of the houses that will be built in the immediate future; and (2) the trend toward prefabrication in sub- assemblies that is already rolling and forget the tin- pan-alley wall sections.

LINDSAY LoRD Falmouth Foreside, Maine

HONEYBEES AND RED CLOVER As an amateur beekeeper, who is more interested

in knowledge of bees than in the delectable honey, I wish to comment on Mr. McAtee's "Cats-to- Clover Chain" (September SM). Undoubtedly, honeybees do pollinate red clover. A few years ago the 30-acre field beside my few hives was in red clover (Trifolium pratense). The late summer and fall were very dry that year, and my honeybees found their chief employment among the blooms of the clover. Standing anywhere in the field, I could count from six to twelve workers among the blos- soms. Some of these bees were collecting pollen, but the majority seemed to be nectar hunters, since their pollen baskets were empty and their abdomens appeared distended. Slowly during August and September their stores of honey increased, although the smartweed (Polygonium) flow of early fall was nearly a failure that year.

This year the same field is in red clover, but my bees are not interested. I walked slowly through the field for a hundred yards today [September 20], but the one honeybee I encountered was working the few scattered flowers of the alsike clover (T. hybridum). Yet, other species of insects, such as the bee flies (Bombyliidae), clover butterflies (Eurymus philodice), and the monarch butterflies (Danaus archippus), are common in the field and give every evidence of satisfaction with the clover's bounty. Probably these insects, for all their abundance, are not enough to pollinate a satisfactory percentage of the clover flowerets. The bumblebee, the uni- versally acknowledged effective, is busily present,

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178 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

but only in very small numbers. Casually esti- mating the numbers of these four insects, I think they are about as numerous this year as in former years. Only the honeybee has sufficient numbers to do the job of pollination, and it alone is absent. Why?

I haven't the slightest idea. My apiculturist friend, Dr. Dunham, states: "The response to red clover varies with the genetic background of the plants, their physical condition, the soil types on which they are grown, weather conditions, and many other factors." Many of the conditions affecting my bees are identical, but the weather this past summer has been unusually wet instead of dry. Possibly this is somehow a factor. Yet a visit to my hive shows the bees are not busy. The smartweed-goldenrod flow is over, the asters are not yet in bloom. Al- though other insects appear to enjoy the red clover, the honeybee will have none of it this fall. Even the alsike and Ladino clovers, which are also in bloom in other fields at no great distance, are only moderately attractive. All summer long my bees have found but little of interest in the abundant clover blooms of several types. The little excess honey they have cured has come from other sources, such as the smartweed-goldenrod complex. Why this dearth of nectar when clover blooms were plentiful ?

Darwin, on a later page of the Origin returns to the subject of the honeybee and the red clover. His words are interesting in view of McAtee's criticism:

The tubes of the corolla of the common red and incarnate clovers (Trifolium pratense and incarnatum) do not on a hasty glance appear to differ in length; yet the hive-bee can easily suck the nectar out of the incarnate clover, but not out of the common red clover, which is visited by humble-bees alone; so that whole fields of red clover offer in vain an abundant supply of precious nectar to the hive-bee. That this nectar is much liked by the hive-bee is certain; for I have repeatedly seen, but only in the autumn, many hive-bees sucking the flowers through holes bitten in the vase of the tube by humble-bees. The difference in the length of the corolla in the two kinds of clover, which determines the visits of the hive-bee, must be very trifling; for I have been assured that when red clover has been mown, the flowers of the second crop are somewhat smaller, and that these are visited by many hive-bees. I do not know whether this state- ment is accurate; nor whether another pub- lished statement can be trusted, namely, that the Ligurian bee which is generally con- sidered a mere variety of the common hive- bee, and which freely crosses with it, is able to reach and suck the nectar of the red clover.

Thus, in a country where this kind of clover abounded, it might be a great advantage to the hive-bee to have a slightly longer or differ- ently constructed proboscis. On the other hand, as the fertility of this clover absolutely depends on bees visitilng the flowers, if humble-bees were to become rare in any country, it might be a great advantage to the plant to have a shorter or more deeply divided corolla, so that the hive-bees should be en- abled to suck its flowers. Thus I can under- stand how a flower and a bee might slowly become, either simultaneously or one after the other, modified and adapted to each other in the most perfect manner, by the continued preservation of all the individuals which pre- sented slight deviations of structure mutually favourable to each other.

I am well aware that this doctrine of natu- ral selection, exemplified in the above im- aginary instances, is open to the same objec- tions which were first urged against Sir Charles Lyell's noble views....

Clearly, Darwin did not regard the clover-bee situation as necessarily static, for the clover might adapt to honeybee pollination; nor did he regard his words as absolute or final. Rather, he regarded the situation as plastic, his interpretations as imaginative and possible, instead of precise and immutable.

McAtee need not have apologized for reopening the question, for outside Russia few believe Darwin infallible. Many, and among them the writer, ad- mire his truly marvelous degree of inerrancy, and for that reason some of us delight in spotting those few errors to be found in the Origin.

Furthermore, questions of considerable economic importance are forcing us to reconsider today the bee-clover relationship, for we find that yields of legume seeds, including red clover, have declined until the situation is acute. Large research pro- grams have been established to discover the reason for these falling yields. It is nearly a hundred years since Darwin found, quite correctly, that 20 heads of insect-pollinated clover yielded 2,290 seeds, whereas 20 protected heads yielded not one. In- vestigators are seeking ways to obtain consistently those high yields. Prominent in the research pro- gram is the relationship of the bee to the clover, for that relationship is not wholly understood, even to- day. In the absence of sufficient wild insects to pollinate the clover, it is of critical importance that we understand better the erratic behavior of the honeybee. Darwin's observations on the subject are still valid, although his interpretations may fall a little short of perfection.

PAUL D. HARWOOD

Ashland, Ohio

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