Your garden may be very small, and its flowers few and far between; but as
your bee-pasture is an area two or three miles round on all sides yours
for the use of your bees, though entered in other peoples' title-deeds,
your own little plot need not much trouble you. Bees seem to prefer to
feed at a little distance from the hive, but have no objection to pasture
close at hand. In the beginning of August, when the honey-yielding flowers
begin to fail, I have found Broadwater Common, near Tunbridge Wells, which
grows the finest heather south of Braemar, covered with my bees, and have
lain down amid the heath-blossoms, watching and listening to my young
friends, immensely enjoying their work.
But if you have any spare space--and there are always nooks and spots
available in the smallest garden--sow on these lemon-thyme in abundance,
rosemary, lavender, salvia, borage, mignonette, and crocus. Apple-trees,
gooseberry and currant-trees, and above all, raspberry-plants, are great
favourites with bees; and as their blossoms come early in spring, they
are most seasonable and productive. But your chief reliance must be
on neighbouring acres of bean-fields and buckwheat or clover meadows,
heather and furze, and hedge-blossoms. Lime-trees are very valuable;
I wish people would allow thorn-hedges to blossom. Let me urge the
cottager to use for the edging of his garden lemon-thyme instead of box
or daisies. Do not fear keeping a dozen stocks. I think many apiarians
talk nonsense when they allege that a district may be overstocked with
bee-hives. If the surrounding country be wholly arable, with little
common, and with too good farming, it may be overstocked. But there are
still left commons unenclosed, woods and heath, and clover and tiny weeds,
which farmers persecute and bee-masters love; and far off are gardens
of all sorts and sizes, in which flowers are cultivated for the owners'
pleasure, constituting admirable bee-pasture. I only regret there is such
a wide-spread rage for double flowers, for bees never touch them. On
that magnificent standard rose, so rich in delicious perfume and so very
lovely, a bee never alights; but the briar and hedge-rose are favourites
and much frequented. On the Clyde, it is usual for bee-proprietors to
carry their hives to Arran, Dunoon, and Kilmun, as soon as the heather
comes into blossom; and cottagers take charge of them at a shilling
apiece. The hives often therefrom receive great and remunerative
additions.