Honied Sources The bees have been providing a good quantum
of honey. The sun which makes them desirous of gathering pollen and nectar, and the damp which makes the sweetness in flowers available, have been vouchsafed in reasonable mixture. It has been said, quite falsely, that bees are wont I) restrict themselves to one sort of flower. One suggestive example of the contrary truth has been noticed by Northern beekeepers. Heather honey, the least mixed as a rule of all honeys, is different from all other honeys in several particulars: in a reluctance to leave the comb and an absence of crystallisation. Of recent years—or so I am assured—the immense increase of the rosebay willow herb in the North, as well as elsewhere, has persuaded the bees to gather from both erica and epilo- bium ; and the fact is made plain to the beekeeper who retains any of his own honey by its quick crystallisation. My own bees have owed much to the flourishing of the white clover near their hives. Apple and lime and heather may give the standard bouts of honey-flower ; but there is no better standby for the bee-master as for the farmer than wild white or Dutch clover. America, I understand, is clamouring for the seed to arrest denudation, that prime enemy of civilisation.
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