206 THE ROLL OF THE SEASONS 



the summer through until their particular honey- 

 flow comes. 



The nature of the honey-flow is usually notorious 

 enough. If he has not anticipated it, the bee-keeper 

 learns it from the colour of his bees' pollen bundles. 

 There is no greater delight than to watch the workers 

 running in from the alighting-board with the rolled 

 balls upon their thighs. The prevailing colour is 

 usually yellow, with here and there a flaming orange 

 or, as it seems, a pure scarlet, to make you wonder 

 where this bee has been. Last year, one bee in 

 about ten thousand came home with bags of brilliant 

 plum-purple, but we never found out where she got 

 her burdens. Indigo pollen puzzled us for some time, 

 but it was a frequent bundle, and therefore not diffi- 

 cult to trace. The pollen of the willow-herb is of an 

 indiscriminate whitish colour till the ball is full, and 

 then it takes on by accumulation this indigo hue. 

 When the honey-flow comes, the bee-keeper likes to 

 see the bundles a grey that is almost black, for that 

 bundle comes from the white clover, the favourite of 

 all lowland honeys. Ours is not so, the white clover 

 crop being slight in the district, and the little there 

 is apparently overlooked by the bees. The bees 

 are all flocking to-day to the lime, and each one 

 seems to have decorated her legs with a little round 

 morsel of cream-cheese. 



They are running into the observatory hive four 

 abreast, a stream that you would think must fill the 

 hive in a few minutes, for somehow we do not notice 

 at the same time a corresponding stream passing out. 

 It is still more fascinating to watch them coming 

 into the garden hive, through a mirror placed on the 



