CATALOGUE OF BEE-FLOWERS, &c.

From the account of the mode of supplying Bees with artificial food, to the enumeration of such trees, plants, and flowers as are most frequented by Bees, for the purpose of culling from them the various substances, which their necessities, their nature, or their instinct (which is a part of their nature) urge them to seek for, the transition is so easy and natural—is so akin to the subject of Bee-feeding, as to be rather a continuation thereof than a transition to a fresh one; I therefore proceed to give a catalogue of those trees and plants which afford pabulum for Bees. It is furnished principally from my own ocular observation, and is partly collected from the observation of others, whose curiosity has led them to pay attention to the subject, and to make remarks upon it.

Of these some are valuable for the supply of pabulum they afford Bees early in spring; as the white alyssum, broom, crocus, furze, hazel, laurustinus, mezereon, ozier, plane-tree, poplar-tree, snowdrop, sycamore-tree, the willow-tree, &c. Others again are valuable on account of the lateness of the season that Bees derive assistance from them; as the golden-rod, heath, ivy, laurustinus, mignionette, ragweed, &c. Some abound with honey; as borage, buckwheat, burnet, coleseed, currant and gooseberry-trees, heath, leek, mignionette, mustard, onion, thyme, the blossoms of apple, apricot, cherry, nectarine, pear, and plum-trees, and the leaves of those trees remarkable for what is called honey-dew, as the aspin, blackberry, laurel, laurustinus, lime, maple, oak, plane, poplar, and sycamore-tree. Among those that are rich in pollen, may be classed—the arbutus, ash, blackberry, box, chesnut, cypress, elder, laurel, marsh-mallow, turnip, &c.

The cultivation of some of the most valuable of these is too-limited to be particularly advantageous to Bees, as alyssum, borage, burnet, golden-rod, laurustinus, mezereon, mignionette, &c. The most extensive and lasting Bee-pasturage in this country is clover, heath, and in my own immediate neighbourhood mustard. In short, every one of the flowers, &c. mentioned in the foregoing catalogue, and others innumerable, are in their turns resorted to by Bees, and of course are more or less advantageous to them.