332 On the Management of Bees. 



in fact, all whose cups are so deep that its sucker cannot reach 

 the bottom of it, where the honey is deposited. He, therefore, 

 who wishes to keep bees must not rely upon every flower as fur- 

 nishing support to his apiary; he must rely only on those which 

 are shallow and small, or which expand widely in the leaves, so 

 that the bee can get to the bottom of the flower ; neither must 

 he rely wholly on the produce of the fields, meadows, pastures 

 or heath, but make his garden, or its borders, a separate planta- 

 tion for such herbs and flowers as are fit for their use. For this 

 purpose, nothing I have found so grateful to the bee, so easily 

 propagated, so fruitful in produce of flowers, and so delightful 

 in its flavour, as lemon thyme. It ornaments every part of my 

 garden ; and as it flowers in the beginning of August, and the 

 honey derived from it is last deposited in the cells, it gives a fla- 

 vour to all the honey which before 4iad partially filled them: 



■ '■- redolentque thymo fragvantia nicU.a. 



ViRG. (rfor^eeiv.* 



The common thyme, winter savoury, and mignonette, I have 

 also found greedily sought after; and as they blow late, they are 

 therefore valuable. 



In the garden, as affording food for bees, I must much recom- 

 mend large plantations of gooseberries, currant trees, and rasp- 

 berries. 



Few of the ornamental flowers of the garden, as the ranuncu- 

 lus, anemone, pink, or carnation, afford any pabulum for the 

 bees ; and as for the tulip, I am induced to think that it possesses 

 some quality injurious to them, from the following circumstance: 

 In the month of May 1817, having gone down to my garden 

 when the tulips were in blow, and looking into the body of the 

 flowers for those which were well coloured, I observed a dead bee 

 in almost every one of them, and in some two. This led me to 

 examine nearly the whole of my beds, and there was scarcely 

 any flower which did not exhibit the same appearance f . 



The blossoms of the first-mentioned shrubs afford to them the 

 earliest flowers, particularly the gooseberry; and the cupidity 

 with which they suck them presents the image of a sailor on his 

 return tasting fresh meat and vegetables, who during a long voy- 



* I cannot help remarking here, that almost every observation in that 

 delightful book, the Goorglcs of Virgil, I have found verified from my own 

 experience. 



■f From what cause this proceeded 1 have not been able to ascertain, un- 

 less from some deleterious substance which the insect might have imbibed 

 from the flower : apprehending, however, that it might have been caused 

 by the inability of the bee to escape from the depth of the flower, I took a 

 few bees from a hive, and put them into several very deep flowers ; but they 

 ail got out, and flew away without any difficulty. 



age 



