I I O THE BLESSED BEES. 



ing the white clover and linn to the bees, the darker 

 honey which they gathered from the buckwheat 

 would be mixed with the white, and so it would all 

 have to sell for dark honey. Moreover, if the bees 

 were fed in the hive, they would gather but little 

 honey from the fields. The only course was at once 

 to remove the filled boxes, and put in empty frames, 

 to be filled with comb, for storing the harvest from 

 buckwheat and other full flowers. It was a delight 

 to take off the clean boxes, with their store of white 

 honey so beautiful and delicate. I had fed an aver- 

 age of forty-six pounds of extracted honey to each 

 hive. From this the bees had made enough wax 

 for building comb, and had filled the comb with 

 honey, so that each hive yielded forty pounds. It 

 will be remembered that this extracted honey was 

 thin and unripe. It would have brought then in 

 market sixteen cents per pound. The value of the 

 honey fed each hive was therefore $7.36. The 

 forty pounds of comb-honey were worth readily, in 

 clean cash, $10. There was, then, a clear profit of 

 $2.64 per hive for feeding the honey back, and get- 

 ting it stored in combs. Indeed, there was a gain 

 larger than this, though it came in a way entirely 

 unexpected by me. I had calculated that my 

 boxes contained two and a half pounds of comb- 

 honey. On sending them to market, later in the 

 season, I found the custom was to sell such boxes 



