SOMETHING ABOUT THE HONEY-BEE.
BY A BEEKEEPER.
To ascertain the kind of flower, plant, or shrub which the honey-bee mostly prefers, is worth care and consideration. Having been a keeper of bees for some years, I think it may be useful to make known the results of my experience and observations in Somersetshire, Hertfordshire, and Middlesex.
I will suppose that I have purchased a new stock and hive, bar-frame for preference, and caused it to be removed from the market-gardens around Middlesex to a country town in Hertfordshire. My bees on arrival examine their prospect, and what an estate-agent may call their ‘outlook,’ very minutely, going even over the walls and trees adjacent to their own hive, and taking trial-trips of flight into the air, straight up—very like the rising of a skylark from a field—and dropping again almost as suddenly. Having to some extent, after a day or two, mastered the topography of the district, they will, if on a warm day in February, commence upon the crocuses, and work only upon them—not, as some may suppose, dodge about irrespective of the kind of flower. Although the casual spectator may see bees upon every description of open flower upon one and the same day, yet they are winging their way from different hives. Our bees have commenced on the crocus. The day following this, they will try the common field dandelion; and the next, the white arabis of the garden culture. Then the black-thorn; later on, the currant and gooseberry blossoms, and the sweet ‘may’ of our hedgerows; and of trees—lime, palm, chestnut come next.
The hive should face the south, and the alighting-board occupy as free a space as possible. Water should be given, even during winter—inside, if frost is severe.
Some beekeepers suppose that colour attracts the bee; others, that they possess acutely the sense of smell; and much has been written on the subject. But our readers are to suppose that we are keeping bees between us, and that I am relating my own experiences, which point to this—the preference of these intelligent insects for some plants over others. I have tried to educate my bees, by inducing them on certain days to gather from flowers presented to them in small bunches upon the alighting-board of their hive. In two instances I succeeded. One was with white clover, which I picked in a field a mile distant. This appeared to cheer the bees greatly, and drove away their listlessness and inactivity. After making an examination of my offering, they began work in earnest; and this stimulant had the desired effect of inducing an idle community to work well. The second experiment was much more demonstrative. Early in the morning, before the workers came forth, I placed by the alighting-board some bunches of alder-flower. I had shortly the satisfaction of seeing the outgoing bees return with little white trousers of pollen, and I watched their flight to an alder tree at a corner of the garden, not far from their hive. This was conclusive.
Now for some descriptions of preference shown by bees. I have grown garden-peas of various descriptions near my hives without inducing the bees to notice them. Yet they will greedily gather from French beans or scarlet runners the whole day, till long after sunset. In spring-time, the yellow gorse on uncultivated spots forms a very strong attraction for the honey-bees; yet they never touch the blossom of the laburnum, which to ordinary mortals smells much the same. The cultivated hyacinth they do not care about, although they gather from the wild sort in the woods and shady groves. Bees show great preference for the pollen of some sorts of lilies, yet are wholly indifferent to the lily of the valley. They gather from the field-daisy, yet are careless of the cultivated sort.
Stocks they prefer to pinks, and lavender to either; also the small flower of the borage delights them; yet wild foxglove possesses little charm. I have heard that bees like monkshood, and will gather from it, but I have never seen them do so. If they did, their honey would be poisonous. Bees are passionately fond of clover and certain vetches, and they will desert any garden flowers for such natural feeding. Wild thyme and heather, which improve the flavour of the honey, bees perfectly revel in. Garden primroses, they do not care much for; and auriculas, however gaudy in colour, form no kind of attraction. The polyanthus they have a languid liking for. I have seen the wild-bees attack the cowslip; but not the honey-bee of our hives. I saw a bee once upon a cultivated rose; it was only resting. I have likewise a distinct remembrance of seeing many upon the wild-rose and dog-rose, wild clematis, honeysuckle, and blackberry blossom.
The situation of our hive cannot always be in such a flowery land; and the beekeeper will do well to study the different flora and trees in the immediate neighbourhood of his hive, and endeavour to supply any deficiencies of pollen-bearing plants, as well as to give a gentle hint to the inhabitants of his hives of any honey-bearing plant from which he especially wants them to gather. Of course, in wild heather districts, there is no need to resort to planting or sowing for the bees; they will in such places always take care of themselves. In Somersetshire, bees find honey from the many miles of apple-orchard stretching away to the mild county of Devon; and farmers well know that a good bee season, with a warm and early spring, means a plentiful show of fruit in the autumn for cider. In and around Middlesex, there are market and fruit gardens; and in Hertfordshire, grazing and clover lands, besides hedges lined with limes and hawthorn, and later on, honeysuckle.
It is always a good plan to send late swarms of the hive into heather-bearing counties; for the bees being young, and having every inducement to work for the approaching winter, will store better than hives which have been ‘swarmed’ and deprived of honey, the colonies of which are worn or fatigued with the long-continued gathering of a summer in more southern counties. It must likewise be remembered that bees cannot gather, or rather will not do so, late in the autumn, when the cold prevents them sealing over with wax the top of the cell.
And now, a last word as to the preference of our bees for certain flowers over others, which we would imagine, with our limited powers of the sense of smell and taste, would be preferred by these insects, and for which we have the greater amount of regard. I have seen, upon the approach of a bee to any flower, that it flies around the calyx almost always before alighting upon the flower itself. This is a cursory examination; and with its antennæ outstretched and quivering, it is evidently scenting the honey contained within. Should this prove a fruitful flower and of the flavour required, the bee settles on the centre of the stamen, and clutching it with its four front-legs, steadies itself with its longer outstretched two hindermost ones, and withdraws the nectar by its proboscis, the rings of the body assuming a vibratory motion the while. The bee’s proboscis is a most important instrument. It is composed of forty cartilaginous rings, each of which is fringed with minute hairs, having also a small tuft of hair at its extremity, where it is somewhat serrated. Its movement is like the trunk of an elephant, and is susceptible of extension and contraction, bending and twisting in all directions. Thus, by rolling it about, it searches out the calyx, pistil, and stamen of every flower, and deposits its nectar upon the tongue, whence it passes into the gullet at the base. The gullet or first stomach is the honey-bag. No digestion takes place here. In shape, it is like an oil-flask, and when full, contains about one grain. It is susceptible of contraction, and is so arranged as to enable the insect to disgorge its contents into the cells of the hive. A short passage leads to the ventricle or true stomach, which is somewhat larger. This receives the food from the honey-bag, for the nourishment of the bee and the secretion of wax. Dzierzon says that the honey which a bee can take into her stomach will enable her to subsist for a week under some circumstances, while under others she will die of hunger within twenty-four hours. This opinion of Dzierzon settles my conviction, that in the selection of the kind of food which will enable the bee to live longest, the true guide is to be found in the flowers for which it has the strongest preference.