20

18 CHAPMAN'S HANDY-BOOK.

but you may have the complaint we often hear, you may
have no garden, or your garden is too small, or you may
be a settler in the country where flowers are few and far
between, and as you look around not a vestage of cultiva-
tion visible, nothing but fern, flax, and ti-tree, a popular
writer says never fear for your bees, for in the very heart
of a town, without a flower in sight, the bees will thrive
as well as the richest garden, for one or two miles
round on all sides is yours for the use of your bees, never
mind though the pasture be entered on other peoples' title
deeds. If you have space for a bit of flower garden near
your beehives the food they provide will save a few
journeys to the bees and pay you well in the increase of
honey - first then, have no double flowers in your garden,
as the bees never touch them. The "Times Bee Master"
says, "On that magnificent standard rose, so rich in
delicious perfume and so very lovely, a bee never alights,
but the sweet briar and hedge rose are favourites and
much frequented." Sow, then, near your hives lemon
thyme in abundance, and cultivate rosemary, lavender,
laurustinas, primrose, violet, sweet briar, honeysuckle, wall-
flower (single) sage, borage, mignonette, mallow, lime.
hyssop, Spanish broom, hawthorn, heath, sunflower, St.
John's wort, and melilotus leucantha, as they are all rich
in honey and farina.
Observe a bee, says Kirby, that has alighted on a
flower. The hum produced by the motion of her wings
ceases, and her work begins. In an instant she unfolds
her tongue, which was previously rolled up under her
head. With what rapidity does she dart this organ
between the petals and the stamina! At one time she
extends it to its full length, then she contracts it; she
moves it about in all directions, so that it may be applied
to the concave and convex surface of the petal, and
sweep them both, and thus by a virtuous theft, she
robs it of all its nectar. All the while this is going
on, she keeps herself in a state of constant vibratory
motion.
Flowers, though the chief, are not the only sourcs
from which the bee derives the material of honey and
wax. She will also eat sugar in every form, treacle, the