FIFTY YEARS AMONG THE BEES 271 



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 atmos- 

 phere a large amount of water if conditions are favorable, 

 Try putting 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 be 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, 

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

 part — ^beautiful, snowy-white, when first put in — became wat- 

 ery 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 GAERET. 



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 

 summer in a garret, and after enduring the freezing of the fol- 

 lowing 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 cUmfites, But a furnace in a cellar makes a big 



