842 THE BEE-KEEPER’S MANUAL. 
wood at top and bottom. In size they are a square of five 
inches on the side, by two inches in thickness, and a dozen 
of them are packed together in a crate for shipment. The 
advantage of using this particular form of box is that the bees 
finish off the section of comb in the shape and quantity found to 
be best adapted for sale, and the seal of the bees upon each cell 
is the best guarantee for the purity of the contents. The 
difficulty of exporting these delicate pieces of comb, without 
the loss of a great part of the shipment by breakages, has 
hitherto prevented the growth of what might doubtless be 
a lucrative business. During four years Messrs. H. K. and 
F. B. Thurber and Co., of New York, have tried to get this 
comb honey to England in good condition, but without suc- 
cess. The want of proper machinery for unloading the ships 
seems to have been the principal cause of the damage. Let 
down “with a run” by a sling from the yard-arm, the glass 
boxes and their fragile waxen contents were again and again 
broken and spoilt. In November last, however [1878], Mr. W. M. 
Hoge, the manager of this firm, succeeded in landing a con- 
signment of 80 tons in Liverpool, and, encouraged by the 
result of the venture, he on Thursday, January 9, landed 
at the London Wharf in Wapping, a lot of about 100 tons, 
brought over in the “California,” one of the Anchor Line of 
steamships. There are 2500 cases in this shipment, con- 
taining over 200,000lb. of honey, and few boxes have sus- 
tained any injury in transit. Taught by past experience, Mr. 
Hoge had his cases securely boarded up between bulk-heads 
on the steamer, and in unloading employed gangs of men 
to pass the cases hand-over-hand down the ship’s side into 
the lighter, and from the lighter on to the wharf. Visitors 
to the Paris Exposition, where Messrs. Thurber and Co. ob- 
tained a medal for their honey, as well as one from the 
French Agricultural Society, for the best honey in the most 
marketable form, may remember the exceedingly neat ap- 
pearance of the honeycomb in these patent hive boxes. 
The importance which bee-keeping has assumed as a reonlar 
branch of industry in the United States, may be conceived 
when it is stated that over 35,000,000lb. of honey are there 
