THE PASTORAL BEES. T1 
A swarm in May is indeed a treasure; it is, like an 
April baby, sure to thrive, and will very likely itself 
send out a swarm a month or two later; but a swarm 
in July is not to be despised; it will store no clover 
or linden honey for the “ grand seignior and the ladies 
of his seraglio,” but plenty of the rank and wholesome 
poor man’s nectar, the sun-tanned product of the ple- 
beian buckwheat. Buckwheat honey is the black . 
sheep in this white dock, but there is spirit and 
character in it. It lays hold of the taste in no 
equivocal manner, especially when at a winter break- 
fast it meets its fellow, the russet buckwheat cake. 
Bread with honey to cover it from the same stalk 
is double good fortune. It is not black, either, but 
nut-brown, and belongs to the same class of goods 
as. Herrick’s ; 
‘*Nut-brown mirth and russet wit.’’ 
How the bees love it, and they bring the delicious 
odor of the blooming plant to the hive with them, 
so that in the moist warm twilight the apiary is 
redolent with the perfume of buckwheat. 
Yet evidently it is not the perfume of any flower 
that attracts the bees; they pay no attention. to the 
sweet-scented lilac, or to heliotrope, but work upon 
sumach, silkweed, and the hateful snapdragon. In 
September they are hard pressed, and do well if they 
pick up enough sweet to pay the running expenses 
of their establishment. The purple asters and the 
golden-rod are about all that remain to them. 
Bees will go three or four miles in quest of honey, 
but it is a great advantage to move the hive near 
the good pasturage, as has been the custom from the 
earliest times in the Old World. Some enterprising 
person, taking a hint perhaps from the ancient Egyp- 
