BEE-KEEPING AND THE SIMPLE LIFE 273 



People generally have got out of the habit of eat- 

 ing honey because it is so seldom on sale In the 

 shops; but if you steadily and continuously remind 

 them of it, they will buy, and soon grow to wonder 

 how they did without it for so long. But it must 

 be set before them in an attractive way. Run- 

 honey must be bright and pure to look at, and 

 neatly bottled and labelled. If you sell honey in 

 the comb, the section-boxes must be spotlessly 

 clean and white. In that old book that first led 

 me to bee-keeping, it says that only the English 

 bee should be kept, because it is a better honey- 

 gatherer. But, from the salesman's point of view, 

 there is a much more weighty reason for abjuring 

 all foreign strains of bees. English bees leave a 

 thin film of air between the honey and the cell 

 cappings, and the result is that the comb always 

 looks perfectly white. But nearly all foreigners 

 fill their cells to the brim, and this means that the 

 finest honeycomb will have a dark and dirty 

 appearance, and no one will be tempted to buy. 

 That is the sort of thing a business-man thinks of 

 first, so the old training days in London have not 

 been altogether without their use even here." 



The song, aloof and desultory, that I had heard 

 from the garden-gate, was growing clearer as we 

 walked ; and now we turned the house-corner, and 

 came upon more hives, with a neat, girlish figure 

 busy among them ; and, hard by, a tiny laundry- 

 shed, wherein I caught a glimpse of brown arms 

 i8 



