May 22. 
COUNTRY GENTLEMAN’S COMPANION. 
131 
be used for hiving swarms with great advantage, for as soon 
as the swarms are in them the queens can begin to lay, and 
the bees to store up honey, to say nothing of the time and 
honey which the bees would otherwise consume in making a 
similar quantity of comb. 
All supers and glasses will, of course, be retained, the 
honey from the former being brought to table in the comb, 
and the latter being brought to table just as they are ; 
the honeycomb in supers and glasses is generally much 
finer than the honeycomb from the large hives. 
Before we leave the subject of honey, it may be stated, 
that when, after a good season, the stock-hives contain 
upwards of 2511>s of honey, they may be fumigated and 
deprived of the excess by cutting out one or two more of the 
side-combs of the hives, and afterwards returning the hives 
to their original positions, taking care to deal very gently 
with the stupified bees during the operation. We must, 
also, again mention the necessity of keeping all honey 
(whether with comb or not,) in a dry place. 
WAX. 
But little remains to be said on the subject of wax; many 
are the means recommended in bee-books for its collection 
and purification; we have tried some of them, hut we have 
been, we suppose, too stupid to succeed well, and as the 
method above-mentioned answers very well for old comb, 
and much better for new, it is hardly necessary to pursue the 
matter further. It is to be remarked, however, that the wax 
from the old combs will be very full of impurities, and that 
that from the new combs will be less full of the same ; to 
get rid of these, melt the wax in a very little water, take a 
small jar, very narrow at the bottom and wide at the top, 
make this pot quite hot, and pour the melted wax into it; j 
the impurities will all sink to the bottom of the wax, and can ! 
be all cut off together, when the mass has become cold and | 
been turned out of the pot. There are so few impurities in 
the wax from the new combs, that the combs may be melted 
in water without the use of the perforated box, and be 
afterwards melted into a small pot as above-mentioned, 
and what few impurities there are at the bottom of it cut j 
away. 
As the colour of wax from now combs is much better than 
the colour of that from old, it will be well to melt the combs 
separately. After the impurities have been cut away, the 
wax may be melted into saucers, to give it the shape of tiro 
wax of commerce. 
We conclude these papers with a few remarks on the sale 
of honey, confessing, at the same time, that we know but 
little, and have been able to gather but little information 
on the subject. 
HONEY FOR MARKET. 
Honey comes to market in two forms, viz.—in the comb, 
and in jai’s; the former is the more valuable; pure, well- 
filled comb selling for as much as half-a-crown per pound 
in many of the London shops. The beauty of a well-filled 
comb, quite free from grubs and brood-bread, attracts tiro 
fancy of those who think less of shillings than we hard¬ 
working family-men do of pence, and when the comb has 
been transferred to the breakfast-table, it reminds its 
happy possessors of sunshine aud flowers, matters more 
dear to Londoners than any other items that go to make up 
this busy world of ours. Good English honey drawn from 
the combs is chiefly sold at the chemists, and its retail price 
is about eighteen-pence per pound ; and it is to bo observed, 
that honey collected in counties where heather is abundant 
does not realize so good a price as that collected from 
gardens, field-flowers, and hedge-rows. Then comes the 
French, Sicilian, and West Indian honeys, the retail price of 
which is about one shilling per pound. 
From this it will appear that the bee-master’s first object 
should be to get as many small, well-filled glasses and 
supers, and also to select as many good, clean combs as 
possible, to sell just as they are, before proceeding to drain 
any portion of his store into pots. His well-to-do neigh¬ 
bours, who are not bee-keepers, would probably purchase 
the greater part of the glasses, supers, and combs, if 
only as an encouragement to scientific bee-keeping; but if 
he should be unable to dispose of all his stock in such a 
I 
' 
manner, he must carry the remainder, with his drained 
honey, to the nearest market-town, where the chemists are 
generally ready to buy what is offered them, for the wholesale 
London houses, at a fair price. 
It has been suggested, that where there is much honey 
to be sold in a village, and there is no convenient neighbour¬ 
ing market, all the honey should be entrusted to some trust¬ 
worthy fellow-villager, and be taken to London, or else- 
were, for sale; it being supposed, that the increased price to 
be thereby obtained for the honey would more than defray 
the cost of the carriage; or the whole store might be con 
signed to some respectable agent for sale on commission ; 
this system once started might be easily kept up. 
We have often seen very excellent foreign honey; but 
there is, happily, a prejudice in favour of English honey, 
which keeps up the price of the latter. 
It may be expected, that before we bring these papers 
to a close we should say something on the profits to be 
derivecl from bee-keeping : we hardly like to do so, for, in our 
variable climate, our hopes are so often disappointed, that if 
we raise unwarranted hopes, and those hopes he not 
realized, the pleasant and (notwithstanding what we have 
said) profitable pastime of bee-keeping will be given up in 
disgust. In making a calculation, however, we shall not 
adopt the exaggerated and ridiculous figures assumed' by 
many writers, but rather err on the other side; let us 
assume, therefore, tlnit each hive in the Apiary yields 
fifteen pounds of honey for the bee-master’s profit; then, if i 
he has six stocks, at the end of the season he will have 
ninety pounds of honey of different sorts; and supposing 
that he gets an average sum of one shilling per pound, 
he will net T4 10s. for his season’s work (besides the health 
and pleasure to be derived from what he has been doing), | 
and T4 10s. is a large sum to a cottager. 
Here we take leave of our pleasant, but oft-interrupted, 
task, originally commenced for cottagers alone. The kind¬ 
ness of Mr. Editor has induced us to wander a little from our 
original intention, and to enter into matters hardly con- ■ 
sistent with the cottage bee-keeping. It was our wish i 
to have brought together such a large amount of practical 
information as might have been easily printed on a broad 
sheet, and have been hung up on the cottage wall, instead 
of being printed in a book, and carefully stowed away in a 
drawer never to see the light of day. Perhaps, by a judicious 
use of the knife, our wish in this matter might be carried 
out. We, at all events, give every one leave to try.—R. 
THE TEMPERATURE AND RAINFALL OF THE 
PRESENT YEAR. 
Upon these subjects, as the writer has remarked in the 
columns of the Mark Lane Express, the backwardness of i 
the present spring naturally enough induces us to regard 
with more than ordinary interest the observations of the 
meteorologist. These have led to some useful remarks 
upon the rainfall of the season, and upon the temperature 
essential to the germination of the seeds, which, although 
chiefly confined to those of the garden, may perhaps here¬ 
after be applied to such as are still more valuable and 
essential to the sustenance of mankind. 
The temperature of the month of April was more un¬ 
usually low than is even commonly believed. The tempera¬ 
ture of the nights, it is true, was most frequently three or 
four degrees above the freezing point of water; hut then 
occasionally it was several degrees below 32 deg. Thus on ' 
the nights of the 1st and 2nd it was at 20 deg.; on the 5th, 
21 deg.; on the 7th, 29 deg.; on the 18th, 21 deg.; on the 
21st, 24 deg.; on the 23rd, 24 deg.; on the 25th and 28th, 
27 deg. Need wo, then, feel surprised that, exposed to such 
a low temperature, and with a dry wind almost constantly 
blowing from the east or north-east, producing a rapid 
evaporation, the wheat plant, especially on high-lying and 
exposed situations, is looking thin and miserable ? From 
our own observations, confirmed by those made at Chiswick 
Gardens, this unusually low temperature has not been 
confined to the atmosphere, but has, during the months of 
February, March, and the first twelve days of April, extended I 
to the soil. In February, at a depth of a foot from the | 
