262 FIFTY YEARS AMONG THE BEES 



the winter in good shape. If kept cold it is apt to granulate, 

 or candy, as it is usually called. If allowed to freeze, the combs 

 crack and look bad, and in time the honey oozes out of the 

 cracks. Honey is deliquescent, absorbing from the atmosphere 

 a large amount of water if conditions are favorable. Try put- 

 ting some common salt in a place where you think of keeping 

 honey; if the salt remains dry, so would honey. But a place 

 that is suitable at one time may not bo at another. Years ago 

 I filled the back end of the honey-room with honey. It was a 

 good place for it; the outside walls were thin and the heat of 

 the sun made it a hot place. When cold weather came, how- 

 ever, it was a bad place, and the lower sections at the back part 

 — beautiful, snowy-white, when first put in — became watery and 

 dark-looking. A fire for cooking was kept in the adjoining 

 room, and although there seemed but very little steam in the 

 air, by the time it got to the back end of the room, and settled to 

 the lower part, there was enough to spoil hundreds of sections. 

 You see, warm air is like a sponge to take up moisture, and cold 

 squeezes the moisture out of it. The point to see to, then, is 

 to have no air coming from a warmer place to the place where 

 the honey is. I would sooner risk honey in a kitchen with a 

 hot fire and plenty of steam, than in a room without fire and 

 with a door partly opened into a sitting-room where no water 

 or steam is ever kept. Indeed, a kitchen is quite a good place 

 to keep honey, the higher up the better. 



KEEPING HONEY IN GARRET. 



It is well known that a cellar, except in particularly dry 

 localities, is about the worst place in which to keep honey ; but 

 it is not so well known that the place the furthest removed 

 from the cellar — the garret — is one of the very best places. My 

 mother kept some sections throughout the latter part of sum- 

 mer in a garret, and after enduring the freezing of the following 

 winter they were as fine as when first put there. The roasting 

 heat of the summer in that garret had so ripened the honey as 

 to make it proof against injury from freezing. 



HONEY IN CELLAR WITH FURNACE. 



I just spoke of a cellar as a poor place for honey except in 

 very dry climate.-.. Bui a furnace in a cellar makes a big differ- 



