_Alder buds_ and _flowers_ are also particularly grateful to bees; the former are said to afford honey for six months together. The maple and the lime also afford it for a considerable time. Dickson, in his "Agriculture," states that the blossoms of _the bean_, which are highly fragrant, though affording but a scanty supply of honey, are nevertheless frequented by crowds of bees. "Is this," says Dr. Evans, "an instance of mistaken instinct?" The young spotted leaves of _the vetch_ (_Anthyllis vulneraria_) they likewise ply continually for three months together, as well as its flowers, even though very distant from their homes. The beans also which prove most attractive to them are those with spotted leaves. From the partiality of these natural chemists for the spotted leaves of the vetch and bean, I suspect that the spotting originates from disease, which causes those leaves to throw out a honeyed secretion. In this opinion I am strengthened by what Mr. Hubbard has stated, in a paper presented to the Society of Arts for 1799, respecting papilionaceous plants. "It is not," says he, "from the flower, but a small leaf, with a black spot on it, which, in warm weather, keeps constantly oozing, that the bees gather their honey." Mr. Hubbard also assures us in the same paper that _the tare_ (_Ervum hirsutum_ et _tetraspermum_) is highly useful to bees; and that several acres, sown near his apiary, otherwise badly situated, rendered it very productive. _Turnips, mustard_, and all _the cabbage tribe_ are also important auxiliaries; their culture is strongly recommended by Wildman, as affording spring food to the bees. In the autumn a field of _buckwheat_ becomes a very valuable resource for them, from its prolonged succession of bloom. Buckwheat flowers in bunches, which contain ripe seeds in one part, while blossoms are but just opening in another. Huber has given his testimony in favour of this black grain, and Worlidge says that he has known the bees of a very large apiary fill the combs with honey in a fortnight, in consequence of being placed near a large field of buckwheat. Bees indeed like to have every thing upon a large scale; whole fields of clover, beans, the brassica tribe and buckwheat, as has been just observed, attracting them much more strongly than scattered plants, though affording finer honey, such as creeping lemon thyme, mignonette, &c. Some flowers they pass by, though yielding a considerable quantity of honey: those of the honey-suckle for instance, though much frequented by the humble-bee, are never visited by the hive-bee, the superior length of the proboscis of the former enabling it to collect what is quite out of the reach of the latter. Every flower of the trumpet honey-suckle (_Lonicera sempervirens_), if separated from the germen, after it is open, will yield two or three drops of pure nectar.