274 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE 
deep in a wash-tub, and heard the last stanza of 
the vagulous song. 
‘Hetty, there,” explained the bee-master, “helps 
in the garden, and Helps, did I say? Why, 
she is far and away a better hand at it than I. 
There is so much in hive-work that needs the 
light touch which only a woman can give. And 
Deborah, she keeps house for us. Did you know 
that the word Deborah was Hebrew for a honey- 
bee? But come and see where I make the hives 
on winter days, and where we sling the honey, and 
fill the super-crates with the sections, and all the 
rest of it.” 
He showed me then his workshop and a little 
gauze-windowed shed where there was a home- 
made honey-extractor—a cunning, centrifugal thing 
by which the combs could be emptied and restored 
unbroken to the bees, to be charged again and 
again. And there was a storehouse, where long 
rows of honey-jars, and stacks of sections, and 
blocks of pale yellow wax were waiting for the 
purchaser, and a packing-shed where the post- 
boxes of corrugated cardboard were made up. 
Finally there was pointed out to me, in a far-off 
corner of the garden, a donkey—shaggy, well-fed, 
placidly browsing—and, under a neighbouring 
pent-roof, a little cart that was a curiosity in its 
way. Its wooden tilt was made to represent a big 
beehive, and on it was painted the name of the 
bee-garden and a list of hive-products which it 
