“One boundless blush, one white empurpled shower
Of mingled blossoms,”
and give those counties the appearance of a perfect paradise, “may be said to constitute a second course for the bees, after their earlier spring feast on the bloom of the currants, gooseberries, and all the varieties of wall fruit.”
Alder buds and flowers are also particularly grateful to bees; the former are said to afford honey for six months together. The maple and the lime also afford it for a considerable time.
Dickson, in his “Agriculture,” states that the blossoms of the bean, which are highly fragrant, though affording but a scanty supply of honey, are nevertheless frequented by crowds of bees. “Is this,” says Dr. Evans, “an instance of mistaken instinct?”
The young spotted leaves of the vetch (Anthyllis vulneraria) they likewise ply continually for three months together, as well as its flowers, even though very distant from their homes. The beans also which prove most attractive to them are those with spotted leaves.
From the partiality of these natural chemists for the spotted leaves of the vetch and bean, I suspect that the spotting originates from disease, which causes those leaves to throw out a honeyed secretion. In this opinion I am strengthened by what Mr. Hubbard has stated, in a paper presented to the Society of Arts for 1799, respecting papilionaceous plants. “It is not,” says he, “from the flower, but a small leaf, with a black spot on it, which, in warm weather, keeps constantly oozing, that the bees gather their honey.” Mr. Hubbard also assures us in the same paper that the tare (Ervum hirsutum et tetraspermum) is highly useful to bees; and that several acres, sown near his apiary, otherwise badly situated, rendered it very productive.
Turnips, mustard, and all the cabbage tribe are also important auxiliaries; their culture is strongly recommended by Wildman, as affording spring food to the bees. In the autumn a field of buckwheat becomes a very valuable resource for them, from its prolonged succession of bloom. Buckwheat flowers in bunches, which contain ripe seeds in one part, while blossoms are but just opening in another. Huber has given his testimony in favour of this black grain, and Worlidge says that he has known the bees of a very large apiary fill the combs with honey in a fortnight, in consequence of being placed near a large field of buckwheat. Bees indeed like to have every thing upon a large scale; whole fields of clover, beans, the brassica tribe and buckwheat, as has been just observed, attracting them much more strongly than scattered plants, though affording finer honey, such as creeping lemon thyme, mignonette, &c.
Some flowers they pass by, though yielding a considerable quantity of honey: those of the honey-suckle for instance, though much frequented by the humble-bee, are never visited by the hive-bee, the superior length of the proboscis of the former enabling it to collect what is quite out of the reach of the latter. Every flower of the trumpet honey-suckle (Lonicera sempervirens), if separated from the germen, after it is open, will yield two or three drops of pure nectar.
In the Transactions of the Society of Arts for 1789, Mr. John. Lane speaks of the fondness of bees for leek blossoms, and says that he raised leeks extensively for their use.
“Your bees will rejoice,” says Mr. Isaac, “when they see the neighbourhood variegated by the blossoms of sunflowers, hollyhocks and Spanish broom, and even the dandelion, which embellishes the garden of the sluggard.” Dr. Evans observed that bees not only collect farina from the numerous assemblage of anthers in the flower of the hollyhock, but a balsamic varnish also, (most likely propolis,) from the young blossom buds, and says he has seen a bee rest upon the same bud for ten minutes at least, moulding the balsam with its fore-feet and transferring it to the hinder legs. An elegant modern writer, speaking of the fondness of bees in general for the flowers of the hollyhock, observes that “it has been held a gross libel upon animals to say, that a man has made a beast of himself, when he has drunk to such excess as to lose his reason; but we might without injustice say, that he has made a humble-bee of himself, for those little debauchees are particularly prone to intoxication. Round the nectaries of hollyhocks, you may generally observe a set of determined topers quaffing as pertinaciously as if they belonged to Wilkes’s club; and round about the flower, (to follow up the simile,) several of the bon-vivants will be found lying on the ground inebriated and insensible.” I have frequently seen the ground beneath one of my pear-trees strewed over with hive-bees and wasps, in a similar state, after they had banqueted upon the rich juices of the fallen fruit. Mr. Kirby, in his Monographia Apum Angliæ, observes that the male humble-bees, when the thistles are in bloom, are often seen asleep or torpid upon its flowers, and sometimes acting as if intoxicated with the sweets they have been imbibing.