Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report: Wooster, Ohio, September 3, 4, 5, 1946
Science
Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report: Wooster, Ohio, September 3, 4, 5, 1946
Northern Nut Growers Association -- Periodicals; Nut trees -- Periodicals; Nuts -- Periodicals
Let us guess at the method he used. As the nomad tribe passed from place
to place with its goats, its sheep, its camels, Johnny with his sons and
grandsons would take to prettying up the camp sites a bit. He
particularly like the dates from one palm that grew upon an oasis far
down the desert. He carried the seeds from this tree and planted them at
various stopping places. He did the same thing with some especially
sweet nuts from a walnut tree which he had found, let us say, in the
Caucasus Mountains. He set out many bright-blossomed desert weeds in
order to attract the wild honey bees. Bees! Wherever there were bees, he
had found flowers that reproduced themselves, trees that bore fruit.
Some of these bees he found to be good workers and others he found lazy,
quarrelsome and inefficient. He killed out the quarrelsome colonies and
built hiding places for the better ones. In short, he did so much to
make the camping places cozy, comfortable and in every way desirable
that finally it became more and more difficult for the tribe to tear
itself away on moving day. By reason of the small irrigation
arrangements which Johnny had found desirable for his plantings and his
bees, grass became more abundant and the flocks did not need to be
moved so often. In time, the whole tribe wakened to the fact that a
revolution had taken place. They did not need to move at all, ever!
There was plenty of grumbling from the die-hards, but here the tribe
stuck. It refused to budge.
In time, a certain phrase, current throughout that part of the world,
was used to describe this pleasant country: "A land flowing with milk
and honey!"
Unfortunately, it was a land, also, which could not fail, in the flower
of its wealth and luxury, to attract the attention of those savage
northerners who lived beyond this favored land. They came, they saw, and
eventually they conquered. When Rome had definitely destroyed the flower
of Asia Minor's civilization, the Roman proconsuls and merchants
"rescued" and carried back to Italy many of the rarest of Mesopotamia's
possessions. Among these, perhaps, were those indispensable
wonder-workers among the flowers, the better bees of Persia. And this
may be the reason why, these many centuries later, our bee experts still
recommend that, if we wish to increase the strength and productivity of
a backward hive of bees, we buy and introduce into the hive an Italian
queen. Her ancient and still prepotent virility can almost invariable be
relied upon to transfuse the colony with new and fruitful vigor. An
"Italian" queen, is it? We wonder, as we think of that venerable land of
Eden which once flowed with milk and honey, whether this so-called
Italian queen might not more correctly be named Persian.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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