HONEY COUNTIES PRICE. 243 



SECTION XVIII. 



Bees. 



PREVIOUSLY to the year 1787, although we had ac- 

 cidentally caught a swarm of bees, we had paid 

 little attention to the culture of honey, our domestic 

 occasions for that article being very limited : and in 

 that year, whether or not the quantity collected or 

 imported was so considerable, or the demand so re- 

 duced, the first and pure honey was sold in Hants, 

 Essex, and various parts of the country, at and even 

 under the price of two-pence per Ib. The middle 

 district of the county of Essex, in the vicinity of 

 Bocking and Braintree, produces probably some of 

 the best of English honey. It is usually collected 

 from the cottagers, by higglers in their carts, the 

 price, in 1824, about sixpence per pound, that of 

 wax about eighteen or twenty-pence. Persons of 

 property in a parish, desirous of promoting the 

 culture of the Bee among the labourers, might very 

 safely purchase the produce of their hives at a some- 

 what higher price, and render the bee husbandry 

 still more encouraging. 



Such a PRICE as the first above quoted, affording 

 the prospect of loss, in every view, instead of that 

 of due remuneration, could not fail to damp the 

 spirit of Apiarian culture on the ground of profit ; 



M 2 



