51 



named more delectably palatable and rich. Boiled with 

 water and spices, and fermented, it makes metheglin, a 

 choice medicinal drink. It also enters largely into many 

 of the choicest medicaments of the apothecary, and is 

 highly esteemed among medical men as a valuable article 

 of the materia-medica. Bees-wax, made from the honey- 

 comb, is also very valuable for many purposes. "What 

 house-wife or seamstress could possibly get along without 

 her ball of white wax, for polishing furniture and smooth- 

 ing thread and silk? It is also used in the laundry, and 

 by the tallow chandler. It enters into the composition of 

 many famous salves and unguents. The nurseryman 

 uses it in preparing his grafting-wax, and the dentist in 

 taking impressions for setting artificial teeth. It would 

 be impossible to name here all the uses to which honey 

 and wax are applied. 



THE MORAL OF BEE-KEEPING. 



"We cannot close our subject without a few "inferen- 

 ces, as the clergy say, drawn from the habits" of bees. 

 From their well known diligence comes one of our pleas- 

 antest proverbs, "As busy as a bee." They commence 

 their work early, and pursue it unremittingly through 

 the day. They never stop to play, or lounge among the 

 flowers, nor to fight, unless in self-defense. They well 

 deserve the sweet lines of the poet in kindly mention — 



" How doth the little busy bee 

 Improve each shining hour." 



"We learn from these well known habits of the bee, that 

 it is best to "Work while the sun shines," and that 

 "Diligence is the life of business." At a certain season, 

 a portion of the bees become of no farther use, and they 

 are destroyed and turned out of the hive as drones and 

 pests of the colony. "We learn by this, that drones and 

 lazy people are not to be tolerated, and that those who 

 "will not work ought not to eat." We should hardly 

 like to carry the discipline quite as far as the bees do, and 



