WINTER WORK ON THE BEE-FARM 8% 
As we drew into the zone of light from the 
windows, many sounds that from afar had seemed 
incongruous enough on the silent, frost-bound 
evening began to explain themselves. The whole 
building was full of busy life. A furnace roared 
under a great caldron of smoking syrup, which the 
foreman was vigorously stirring. In the far 
corner an oil engine clanked and spluttered. A 
circular saw was screaming through a baulk of 
timber, slicing it up into thin planks as a man would 
turn over the leaves of a book. Planing machines 
and hammers and handsaws innumerable added 
their voices to the general chorus; and out of the 
shining steel jaws of an implement that looked half 
printing-press and half clothes-wringer there flowed 
sheet after sheet of some glistening golden material, 
the use of which I could only dimly guess at. 
But I had time only for one swift glance at this 
mysterious monster. The bee-master gripped me 
by the arm and drew me towards the furnace. 
“ This is bee-candy,”’ he explained, ‘‘ winter food 
for the hives. We make a lot of it and send it all 
over the country. But it’s ticklish work. When the 
syrup comes to the galloping-point it must boil for 
one minute, no more and no less. If we boil it too 
little it won’t set, and if too much it goes hard, and 
the bees can’t take it.’’ 
He took up his station now, watch in hand, close 
to the man who was stirring, while two or three 
others looked anxiously on. 
“Time! ”’ shouted the bee-master. 
The great caldron swung off the stove on its sus- 
pending chain. Near the fire stood a water tank, 
and into this the big vessel of boiling syrup was 
