The Bee- Master of Warrilow. 



'* But candy-making," he went on, as we moved slowly 

 through the populous building, "is by no means the only 

 winter work on a bee-farm. There are the hives to make 

 for next season ; all those we shall need for ourselves, and 

 hundreds more we sell in the spring, either empty or 

 stocked with bees. Then here is the foundation mill." 



He turned to the contrivance I had noticed on my entry. 

 The thin amber sheets of material, like crinkled glass, were 

 still flowing out between the rollers. He took a sheet of 

 it as it fell, and held it up to the light. A fine hexagonal 

 pattern covered it completely from edge to edge. 



**This," he said, "we call super-foundation. It is 

 pure refined wax, rolled into sheets as thin as paper, and 

 milled on both sides with the shapes of the cells. All 

 combs now are built by the bees on this artificial founda- 

 tion ; and there is enough wax here, thin as it is, to make 

 the entire honeycomb. The bees add nothing to it, but 

 simply knead it and draw it out into a comb two inches 

 wide ; and so all the time needed for wax-making by the 

 bees is saved just when time is most precious — during the 

 short season of the honey-flow." 



He took down a sheet from another pile close at hand. 



" All that thin foundation," he explained, " is for sec- 

 tion-honey, and will be eaten. But this you could not eat. 

 This is brood-foundation, made extra strong to bear the 

 great heat of the lower hive. It is put into the brood-nest, 

 and the cells reared on it are the cradles for the young 

 bees. See how dense and brown it is, and how thick ; it is 

 six or seven times as heavy as the other. But it is all 

 pure wax, though not so refined, and is made in the same 

 way, serving the same useful, time-saving purpose." 



We moved on towards the store-rooms, out of the 

 clatter of the machinery. 



" It was a great day," he said, reflectively, " a great 

 day for bee-keeping when foundation was invented. The 

 bee-man who lets his hives work on the old obsolete natural 

 system nowadays makes a hopeless handicap of things. 

 Yet the saving of time and bee-labour is not the only, and 

 is hardly the most important, outcome of the use of foun- 

 dation. It has done a great deal more than that, for it 

 has solved the very weighty problem of how to keep the 

 number of drones in a hive within reasonable limits." 



62 



