BENEFIT OF HEDGE-ROWS. 425 



ought to form a part of the study of every keeper of bees. 

 A highly cultivated country is by no means beneficial to the 

 bee, for as soon as the harvests are got in, the fields are a 

 complete desert to the bee. A country that is not intersected 

 with hedges is equally unfavourable, for it is from them that 

 the bees collect the greater part of their provisions. The 

 hedges in general abound with the blackberry, the furze, 

 the broom, the wild-rose, the marsh-mallows, &c. &c. in- 

 dependently of the rows of elm *, oak, horse-chestnut, lime, 

 &c, from all of which the bees collect a considerable quan- 

 tity of honey and farina. The fields studded with the use- 

 less daisy are a desert to the bee ; but it is the fields which 

 are whitened with the buck-wheat, the plains which are 

 gilded with the flower of the wild mustard, the turnip, and 

 the whole of the brassica tribe, that furnish the bees with a 

 continual supply of food, and in which they love to disport, 

 leaving the gaudy flowers of the garden " to waste their 

 sweetness on the desert air." 



In regard to the number of hives which any particular 

 tract of country can maintain, various and conflicting opi- 

 nions have been hazarded ; for whilst some consider that a 

 country cannot be overstocked on account of the supposed 

 inexhaustible supply of food which the vegetable kingdom 

 is continually producing and reproducing ; others maintain, 

 and with a greater show of reason, that analogically con- 

 sidered, a country may be overstocked with bees on the 



* M. Buchoz affirms, that the farina of the elm, the elder, the lime, and 

 the acacia, is injurious to the bees ; but he furnishes us with no other ground 

 for the truth of the assertion than his own words. M. Buchoz should also 

 have mentioned the manner in which it is injurious to the bees, for it is well 

 known that the four above mentioned trees yield little or no honey, although, 

 with the'exception of the elder, which, by the by, is not much visited by the 

 bees, they are all excessively abundant in farina. So far from considering the 

 elm, the lime, and the acacia as being prejudicial to the bees, we always look 

 upon the vicinity of those trees as a great and valuable acquisition to the 

 apiary. 



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