THE PHYSICIAN IN THE HIVE 85 
wax, or they may be due to the turpentine, but 
probably they lie in another direction altogether. 
Bees collect a peculiar resinous matter from pine 
trees and elsewhere, with which they varnish the 
whole surface of their combs, and this may be the 
real curative element in the stuff.” 
Now, with a glance at the clock, the bee-master 
went to the open door and hailed his foreman in 
from his work about the garden. Between them 
they lifted away the heavy caldron from the fire, 
and tilted its steaming contents into a barrel close 
at hand. The whole building filled at once with a 
sweet penetrating odour, which might well have 
been the concentrated fragrance of every summer 
flower on the countryside. 
£* But of all the good things given us by the wise 
physician of the hive,’’ quoth the old bee-keeper, 
enthusiastically, “ there is nothing so good as well- 
brewed metheglin. This is just as I have made it 
for forty years, and as my father made it long 
before that. Between us we have been brewing 
mead for more than a century. It is almost a lost 
art now; but here in Sussex there are still a few 
antiquated folk who make it, and some, even, who 
remember the old methers—the ancient cups it used 
to be quaffed from. As an everyday drink for 
working-men, wholesome, nourishing, cheering, 
there is nothing like it in or out of the Empire. 
