126 BEES AND FLOWERS 



who wish to attract bees of all kinds should make 

 a point of growing borage, anchusa, Canterbury 

 bells and, indeed, campanulas generally. I know 

 of a monastery garden in Surrey where a wide 

 border of Canterbury bells is always grown, 

 and resounds from morning till night with the 

 murmur of bees. 



Clarkias are favourite flowers, blooming in the 

 late summer when field flowers are nearly over, 

 and at the same time the stately hollyhocks 

 prove very attractive. Bumble-bees visit them 

 in hundreds, but the hive- bee only does so when 

 other things seem to have failed. They get as 

 dusty as millers when working in these extremely 

 pollinaceous flowers. 



Mignonette contains a good deal of honey, and 

 attracts bees in numbers, but there is perhaps no 

 greater favourite than that beautiful purple sedum 

 which flowers at the end of August, bearing great 

 masses of flowers on every clump. I have seen 

 scores of bees at work on this flower, disputing 

 with the peacock and tortoiseshell butterflies the 

 priority of possession. Such a clump will almost 

 surely provide for the lover of Nature a thousand 

 varied scenes of insect life, if he have the pati- 

 ence — as all true lovers of nature should have — 

 to watch it day by day. 



