166 THE BEE-MASTER OF WARRILOW 
bulk has evaporated, and its sugar has been inverted 
into grape-sugar. Then it is honey, but not before. 
When we see the fanning-army at work by the 
entrance of a hive, it is not alone an undoubted 
passion for pure air that moves the bees to such 
ingenious activity. In the height of the honey 
season many pints of vaporised liquid must be given 
off by the maturing stores in the course of a day 
and night, and all this water must be got rid of. 
Herein is shown the wisdom of the bee-master who 
makes the walls of his hives of a material that is a 
bad conductor of heat. It is a first necessity of 
health to the bees that the moisture in the air, which 
they are incessantly fanning out at this time, should 
not condense until it is safely wafted from the 
hive. A cold-walled hive can easily become a 
quagmire. 
The bee-garden is quiet now in the sweet virgin 
light of the summer’s morning; but the thought of 
it as containing so many houses of sleep, true of 
the village with its thatched human dwellings, 
could not well be farther from the truth in regard 
to the village of hives. There is little sleep in a 
bee-hive in summer. Of any common period of 
rest, of any quiet night when all but the sentinels 
at the gate are slumbering, of any general time of 
relaxation, there is absolutely none. Each in- 
dividual bee—forager or nurse, comb-builder or 
storekeeper—works until she can work no more, and 
then stops by the way, or crawls into the nearest 
empty cell for a brief siesta. But the life of the 
hive itself never halts, never wavers in summer- 
time, night or day. Go to it morning, noon, or 
night in the hot July season, and you will always 
