The honey bee Author:Thomas James Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: organs of hearing at all. But if it should be urged that, though they cannot hear, yet perhaps they may feel the repercussion of sounds, I grant it is possible t... more »hey may. Yet that these impressions are distasteful or hurtful I deny, because bees, in good summers, thrive well in my outlet, where the echoes are very strong; for this village is another Ana- thoth, a place of responses or echoes. Besides, it does not appear from experiment that bees are in any way capable of being affected by sounds; for I have often tried my own with a large speaking-trumpet held close to their hives, and with such an exertion of voice as would have hailed a ship at the distance of a mile, and still these insects pursued their various employments undisturbed, and without showing the least sensibility or resentment." Next to the situation of the hive is the consideration of the bees' pasturage. When there is plenty of the white Dutch clover, sometimes called honeysuckle, it is sure to be a good honey year. The red clover is too deep for the proboscis of the common bee, and is therefore not so useful to them as is generally thought. Many lists have been made of bee- flowers, and of such as should be planted round the apiary. Mignionette, and borage, and rosemary, and bugloss, and lavender, the crocus for the early spring, and the ivy flowers for the late autumn, might help to furnish a very pretty bee-garden; and the lime Of Gilbert White—who by the way was not " parson of the parish," but continued a Fellow of Oriel till his death—all that could be heard at the scene of his researches by a late diligent inquirer was, that " he was a still, quiet body, and that there was not a bit of harm in him." And such is the fame of a man the power of whose writings has immortalized an obscure village and a...« less