July, 1915. 



American Hee Journal 



233 



THE HONEY-HOUSE AT THE HEATHER 

 Notice the wire fence with 



busy himself, the lady volunteered to 

 show us through the factory. 



We will not spend any time describ- 

 ing the buildings in which tallow, 

 stearine, ceresine and paraffine are 

 purified or made into soap and candles. 

 Of course beeswax is also used in mak- 

 ing the candles, but we were informed 

 that there are no longer any pure-wax 

 candies made. When I was a child, 

 the Catholic churc les would not use 

 any candles but those made of the 

 pure wax from the honeybee, for 

 church consumption. 



Modern discoveries have brought a 

 change in the regulations, and it ap- 

 pears that only about 40 percent of the 

 sweet-smelling product is required at 

 present in the finest candles, I am not 

 divulging a trade secret, but stating 

 a commercial fact. But is not elec- 

 tricity still better for church lights? 

 That fr ghttul power of lightning which 

 was at one time considered as the 

 manifestation of the anger of God, 

 and which was on the contrary one of 

 the finest gifts from the Deity to man, 

 is surely the proper light for solemn 

 ceremonies. 



The honey and wax department of 

 this institution is unlike anything we 

 had ever seen. They had no stock on 

 hand at the time, for the honey and 

 wax rendering is all done in November 

 and December. It is at that time that 

 the bee owners of the Landes brim- 

 stone the colonies which they do not 

 wish to keep. After the bees have 

 been killed, the willow skeps contain- 

 ing the combs heavy with honey are 

 brought to the factory and lumped at a 

 price which nets the producer an aver- 

 age of ?L' (10 per colony. The contents 

 are cut out. dumped into a large press 

 and the honey drained out. The wax 

 is then melted in a vat and run into 

 cakes. So their honey building con- 

 tains very little machinery outside of 

 several large steam vats and presses. 

 During the previous year they liad 

 handled some 600,000 pounds of honey 



APIARY OF COUTEREL & LAUSSUCQ 

 a concrete corner post 



and about 55,000 pounds of beeswax. 

 This honey is very strong in flavor 



naturally, since it is almost exclusivelv 

 from heather and more or less pollen 

 IS mixed with it during the process of 

 pressing. It sells mainly to German 

 exporting houses. I am told that much 

 of It IS used by those houses for " miel 

 de fantaisie" (manufactured honey), in 

 which strong-flavored honey is needed 

 to flavor the cheap glucose of com- 

 merce. There is a movement on foot 

 in France to forbid the usp of the 

 word "honey" for anything but pure 

 honey, and that is emphatically right. 



In the production of wax from this 

 rendering of skeps, I learned that the 

 yield of rich hives, heavy with honey 

 is about 5 percent of the total weight' 

 in beeswax, with about 15 percent of 

 waste, the rest being honey. Spring 

 purchases of combs from dead colo- 

 nies yield from 35 to 50 percent of wax. 

 This is probably mainly new comb and 

 entirely dry, for the combs of very old 

 colonies yield a less amount than that. 

 They also bleach wax, by sun expo- 

 sure. Beeswax from heather combs 

 bleaches readily, while there is much 

 other wax which persistently retains 

 the yellow, red or brown shade. Such 

 is the wax from the Mississippi valley 

 which is very difficult to bleach. 



These people were charmingly en- 

 tertaining. They had expected our 

 visit and had a royal lunch ready. Here 

 for the first time we ate of a renowned 



HEATHER APIARY OF COUTEREL & LAUSSUCQ 

 Thin asbestos-concrete roofs and concrete stands for the hives 



