BEES AND FLOWERS 125 



deliberately tearing the hole with its jaws and 

 afterwards sucking the honey. Insects which 

 followed made use of this opening, and thus saved 

 themselves considerable labour in passing in and 

 out of the flower. From the flower's point of 

 view this must be serious, for if, in course of 

 time, bees universally made a hole in this way, 

 where would be its fertilising medium ? 



Bees sometimes collect both honey and pollen 

 on the same journey, but when the honeyflow is 

 really on, it will generally be found that the 

 majority leave pollen gathering alone, while in 

 the early part of the season many go out solely 

 to collect pollen, procuring it from flowers which 

 do not give honey at all. I have several times 

 seen bees getting pollen from the grasses, which 

 are, of course, generally wind fertilised. 



In the early part of the year, where such trees 

 as the hazel and the sallow do not flourish, it is 

 customary to provide artificial pollen in the shape 

 of pea or wheat-flour sprinkled on chopped hay. 

 The insects will make use of this until plenty of 

 natural pollen is available, but desert it as soon 

 as flowers appear in numbers. 



I have said that the greater number of our 

 garden flowers are not attractive to bees, and this 

 is the case, but there are a large number of such 

 flowers of which bees are very fond, and if grown 

 in sufficient quantity they would no doubt be 

 able to store honey in large quantities. Those 



