HINTS ON THE MANAGEMENT OF BEES. By the Rev. W. C. Cotton, M.A. (Continued from our last.}

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume IV, Issue 269, 26 February 1848, Page 2

HINTS ON THE MANAGEMENT OF BEES. By the Rev. W. C. Cotton, M.A. (Continued from our last.}

They will extract every atom of honey from the wax ; all that man can do is to press out the drops. The instruments with which he work 1 ? are not so fine as those of the Bees, and so he cannot make such a neat job of ir. Don't think it is a waste to put your drained honey-combs before your Bees for them to lick clean, or fancy that by pressing the combs you might have got more honey from them. You would have got foul honey by pressure ; the Bees only jick up what is perfectly pure, and nothing is wasted, for the Bees do not consume any more, because they have their hive well stored. You only pour honey from one pot into another. You lay up sixpences in a. savings bank, from which you may draw pounds in a proper time. The Bees will leave your wax in a fit state for melting, of which more anon. 1 have not yet done with the honey; — The virgin honey is the easiest to extract, and is of course the finest, because you get it purest from the comb. Honey equally pure is stored" by the Bees in foul combs. The question is, how to get it out. It is like pouring off liquor from a bottle which has a great sediment in it. You must do it carefully, or a muddy stream will flow instead of a pure one. Remember what it is that has made the cells foul. Young Bees have been bred in some cells, and Bee-bread has been stored in others. The old careless way of pressing all the combs together, good, bad, and indifferent, gives you nothing but secondrate honey, mixed with a great deal of stuff which it will not do to name, or even to think of, while you are eating it. Hear what good Sir John More said 140 years ago, of this careless way of extracting the honey : — "In Hampshire, where there are great quantities of Bee-gardens well stock'd, the Bee-man does not take the care as is here set down, but takes all the honey-combs out of the hive with a light shovel ; he puts all into a tub, and pounds 'em all together; and then, putting it confusedly into a strong-haired bag, does violently press out all that will run, and this (having first its season of heat over the fire) they put in barrels or other vessels to work. This done, they put what remains in the bag- into a trough or other vessel, and and wash it for meath. When the sweetest is all washed out, being crushed dry,, the balls they try for wax." Let this, then, be one of your standing rules ; .never press your honey-comb ; slice your dark combs, as [told you to do the virgin ones, and pure honey will run from

them. If you press them, you get the Beebread and other impurities mind up with it. When all has run that will, let the Bees pick up the remainder, and then put by the impure comßs apart from the combs against you try down your wax. ' * Where apiaries are established on a very large scale, and honey is abundant, it will be found convenient to have a tin vessel made like the wood-cut, to strain the honey in large quantities directly it is taken from the hives, (a) is a funnel of tin which will hold a hun-dred-weight or two of combs, which will be placed in it directly they are sliced, in such a position that the honey may drain freely from them. (6) is a strong open strainer of perforated tin, on which the combs rest to prevent them pressing upon or clogging up the finer strainer (<?), made of coarse muslin or gauze stretched on an iron ring. The funnel contracts below the second strainer, and ends in a pipe, which goes into the honey-pot (c?) placed below to receive what drains from the pipe. This pipe should fit pretty closely in a hole cut in the top of a temporary wooden lid made for the honey pot, or the Bees will soon be attracted by the smell, and cairy away the honey as fast as it drips. The tin vessel itself should also have a lid. Then the whole process may be performed without dust or anything marring it. You'll be surprised to find the great difference in the honey which your Bees make at different times of the year. The best, perhaps, that ever I tasted was made in the neighbourhood ot a number of almond trees while they were in full flower. It is one of the few cultivated plants which materially affect the quality of the honey ; and may be profitably grown to a great extent in this country. The honey also from clover paddocks is very plentiful, and beautifully white. Many native trees, too, are excellent honey producers; whilst some few others impart to the honey a peculiar, and to some people, a disagreeable twang. This sort should of course be set apart for physic, as nastiness seems to be one of the essential virtues of medicine, aud you will have plenty of use for your nasty honey as physic. In one place last year, sixty pounds of honey were used for cough mixture alone. Bees have not long enough been observed in this country to say with certainty from what trees they get the different varieties of honey. But there is one peculiarity in a great deal of the New Zealand honey, which I must mention, namely, its great readiness to crystallize. In some districts whole boxes will be found with the honey crystallized in the cells in one solid mass, as difficult ro cut through as a very solid cheese. The virgin combs filled with this species of honey are exquisitely white, and the honey of such good quality, that it may be eateu quite as a confection. The comb when cut through shews hardly any appearance of wax ; it shews one solid mass of sugar; and yet the shape of the cells is clearly discernible. The whole comb may be carefully dissected, like a puzzle, or rather, the separate hexagons of sugar which have been cast in the cells, though it would puzzle the cleverest geometrician in the world to reconstruct them. No one can imagine the beautiful appearance of such a comb unless he sees it, and it is equally pleasing to more senses than one. But yet the bees cannot eat it. Place a piece before the most populous hive, and though the Bees will carry away a small portion of honey, whi'h they manage to dissolve, still they leave behind a mass of sugar-plums, which they can no more reconvert into syrup fit for their consumption than they could a solid loaf of sugar. So that I believe a hive amply stored with this sort of honey would die of starvation if they could get no fresh supplies. You can be in no doubt what to do with this sort of honey-comb. It will keep any length of time if the combs are wrapped up in white paper, and carefully packed away, or put, a number of them together, in a box. It is one of the best specimens of ~New Zealand produce, with which to surprise and please our friends at home. But it affects what I am now telling you about running your honey in this way. It is difficult, nay impossible, to get it from the impure combs by any -of the ordinary methods ; it will not tun : pressure is equally useless. The only method I know is jto put combs and all intoha kettle, with just enough water to prevent their burning. Simmer them gently ; then pour through a sieve: this will stop the grosser impurities, though if the combs are old, a great deal of nastiness will have been mixed up with the soup itself. Let it stand till cold, and then the wax will have formed a cake at the top, like balfmelted ice. Take this off carefully, qnd then clarify the honey which is below, in the ordinary way ; that is, simmer it slowly, adding more qr less water, according to the consistency'^ou wish to bring it to, skimming off the 1 scum as it rises. To prevent the honey burning; which will give it a dark colour, it is a good plan, to place the vessel with the honey you are clarifying within another pot of water, glue-pot fashion. The result of all this trou-

We will not be equal to the spontaneous production of the virgin combs : and yet I have never been able to hit upon a better plan of treating the dark combs which have crystallized honey in them. You may keep this inferior honey to feed your weak stocks with, end to use as physic. Dark combs which have liquid honey in them you have only to slice, and let drain as I told you above. And now for the second article of Bee produce — the wax. It is by far the most valuable of the two : for this reason — because there will be an unlimited demand for it. Solomon says — " It is not good to eat much honey :" Proverbs 25 — 27. And as with individuals, so with commerce ; there is soon a glut of honey, but an almost infinite demand for wax. Australian Bee-keepers have found that it barely pays to export honey to England, but wax, as well as tallow, will be one of their staples. I> for my part, wish all the world were lighted with wax candles ; and that the last of the snuffers 'were preserved in some national museum. Such a happy day is, I fear, far distant ; but still we may live to see the day when every one in New Zealand burns a wax candle of his own making. The Bees we have at present in New Zealand are only the seed of that vast crop which will one day fill our woods. When every hollow tree almost is tenanted, and the Maoris have learnt the way of tracking the Bees to their homes, the quantity of wax which will be brought to our markets will be enormous. That which can be obtained from tame Bees is comparatively small. Not much more than a pound can be got from the combs of a hive which, if full, would contain twenty or thirty pounds of honey. Still, " many a little makes a mickle." So no careful Bee-wife ought to waste a single-ounce of wax. Have a box in your Bee-house into which you may put all the scraps of comb which *would otherwise be lost, with the refuse from which the Bees have licked the honey; then have two or three melting-days in the course of the year. Besides tha combs from which the honey has run, you may have a considerable quantity more if you c arefully save up all belonging to hives which die off in the winter (and in a large apiary there will be many such, from the loss of the queen and divers other causes) ; you may also cut out several empty combs from roost of your hives, when you turn them up in the spring for the purpose of cleansing the bottom board, and thoroughly examining into their state. Allthese combs should be divided into three, or at least two, divisious. First, pure white comb ; secondly, comb of but one year old, which has indeed been bred in, but in which there is still more wax than refuse ; thirdly, old black comb, and those in which there is a great deal of Bee-bread. The structure of this black comb is very curious. Lay a piece in the sun till it gets a little softened ; you may then easily pick it to pieces cell by cell. You will find that each cell contains four or five layers of the silk which the grub spins in its transformation. These are moulded into the shape of the cell ; and it seems to me, though I can hardly believe it, that the bees have some means of taking up the wax of which their cells are at first wholly composed, when the silky substance is ready to take its place, " waste not, want not," being one of the bees' standing mottoes.The practical mode of preparing the wax I shall give in the words of the same Sir John Moore, whom I have quoted above. '* The manner of ordering the wax is as followeth : — Take the wax and dross, and set it over the fire in a kettle or cauldron, that may easily contain it ; then in so much water as will make the wax swim, that it may boil without burning ; and for this reason, while it is boiling gently over the fire, stir it often ; when it is thoroughly melted, takejt off the fire, and presently pour it out of the kettle into a strainer of fine thin linen or of twisted hair ready placed upon a screw or press ; lay on the cover, and press out the liquor, (as long- as any wax comes) into a river of cold water ; but first wet both the bag and the press to keep the wax from sticking ; at the ' first cometh most water ; at the last most dross ; and in the middle most wax. "The wax growing hard, make it into balls, squeezing out the water with your hand. When you have thus done, break all the balls into crumblets, and in a skillet or kettle, set it over a soft fire ; while it is melting, stir it and skim it with a spoon wet in cold water ; and as soon as it is melted and skimmed clean, take it off, and haying provided the mould, first warm the bottom^ especially if the cake be small, and besmear the -sides with honey, and then* instantly pour in the wax (being as cool as it will run) through a linen strainer ; when you come near the bottom, pour it gently till you see the dross come, whicli strain into some other mould by itself; and when it is cold, either try it again, or, having pared away the bottom, keep it as it is, for some use or other. When the wax is in the mould, if there be any froth yet remaining on the top, blow it

together at one side, and skim it off lightly with a wet spopn. "This done, set not the cake abroad where it may cool too hastily, but put it in a warm house not too far from the fire ; and if it be a laye cake, cover it over warm to keep the top from coolinjr, till the inward heat be allayed, and 60 let it stand, not moving the mould till the cake be cold ; if it stick, a little warming of the vessel or. mould will loosen it, so that it will presently slip out." I have but little to add to this. In practical household wisdom, our grandfathers were certainly our betters. I would only recommend you not to put your very fine wax in with the common wax ; but reserve it for an easier process, of w hich I will speak presently. I have found it a good plan, to put all the wax into the strainer at first, a flannel bag does as well for want of the hair bag mentioned in the receipt; then boil it as you would a plum pudding in a large pot of water. When it is all melted, lift it out, and put it into the press, which should be previously heated by pouring hot water upon it, or it will congeal the wax as it flows. The press should be set slanting, and have a spout leading from the lower side to the cold water into which the wax is to flow. The simplest kind of press 1 know is made of two stout boards planed smooth, the lower fixed on a slant, the upper one joined to it by stout hinges at the upper end, with a long lever coming from the lower end. When finished it will look like a gigantic pair of nut crackers. Strips of wood should be nailed round the edges of the lower board, to prevent the wax flowing off sideways. When you put your bag with the honey in it into this press, you may put any degree of pressure upon it you please. If you think all the wax has not flowed from the bag at one pressure, return it again to the boiling pot aud try again. Now for a few words about melting your finer combs.- Crush them with your hands into a saucepan with a J.itie water at the bottom of it. Melt this slowly before the fire without boiling it. Take a fine sieve, or a piece of muslin, dip it into scalding water before you use it to strain the wax ; for if it is cold, much will congeal upon it, then pour the •fine wax through it into the moulds prepared, as Sir John More directs. (To be continued.)