HONEY AND WAX. (Continued from No. 269.)

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume IV, Issue 271, 4 March 1848, Page 3

HONEY AND WAX. (Continued from No. 269.)

A cup or basin is a mould for wax always readj at band, and tbe Bee-wife raty cast her 'takes of wax to suit bei own convenience, for household use. But when the produce of her Bees exceeds her home consumption, she will find it convenient to run the wax into moulds containing each a pound, c r some multiple of a pound, just as the dairy-woman makes up her pound pats, and so on. When New Zealand exports wax, which will be when the produce of the woods is joined to that of the apiaries, it will be found most convenient to cast the wax into squat es like the chocolate cakes, which the Americans expoit to all ," parts of the world 1 ". .' Hitherto I have spoken of honey and wax, the produce of the Bee<s in their first ami simple forms. The bleached wa» of cornmeice is easily prepared by increasing the surface of they/ax,e v/ax, and then expohiti^ it to the action oi the sun and air. The method by whicif (his is done in Poland, wlieie bleached wax is male to a gieat extent, is to pour the mek"d fluid as cold as it will run through a hopper, with a slip in the bottom of it, upon a cylinder of metal turueJ true, which is kept cold by revolving in such a way ihat the lower part is always in water, just like a grindstone. By this 'i cans, the wax is spun out into long thin ribbands. These libhands are then laid upon a frame covered with linen cloth, and exposed to the action of the sun, air, and dew. If the weather is fine, the colour will change in a few days. Then melt again, and repeat the operation till the whole substance of tbe wax is perfectly white. Theu cast them into cakes for use or sale.* The uses of wax for domestic purposes and in the arts are various and extensive. The greater portion of that imported into England is used perhaps in candles. But I have already said that I hope the day may come wheu wax candles of our own make will take the place of dips. But there are many smaller articles which a careful housekeeper will like to have at hand ; to say nothing of the pleasure of sewing with a well- waxed thread. Lip-salve and cerate are no bad things to have in the house: the latter is made by melting an ounce of wax, and heating an ounce of sweet-oil, not boiling either. Pour them together at about the same temperature, and keep stirring steadily until they leave the fluid for the buttery state. If you leave off stirriug just at the setting point, the wax and oil will separate, and you will have to melt again. But if you stir steadily all the time, you will have a substance soft as butter and smooth as oil ; of such excellent healing powers that I have sometimes wished to have a sore place to test • its virtues. The cerate may be made harder or softer by altering the proportion of oil to the wax. The softer cerate is best for dressing a blister; nothing better. The harder, for spreading on linen, to apply to any sore made by long confinement in bed. An excellent ointment for a burn is made by dissolving a lump of camphor in the oil before you add it to the wax. Remember what I said about stirring. Many other things may be made of wax — lip-salve, &c. ; but I shall not stop now to

__ * A simpler way of bleaching wax in small quantities, is to run it into cakes in the usual way, and then bleach as before ; only be careful not to overheat your wax, for you will spoil its colour, and deprive it of many of its useful qualities. Remember what I said of the glae-pot fashion.

give the receipts for them, as almost any old woman knows how 'o make them. Mow, to speak of the uses of honey : It will save you many a sugar-bill if you have plenty of it ; and many a bill for other tl ings too. Excellent wine may be made from it, which, when it has been kept some few years, can hardly be told from Sherry. The old receipts for Metheglin I shall give in an AppendiXk Anybody who pleases may try it, or modify if so as to suit our altered tastes, by leaving out some of the yatbs. I fancy a few of us would like so many as suited Queen Elizabeth's palate. The oilier receipts have been tiied in New Zealand, and succeed well. If your wine is a failure, remember that by sun and air u will turn into excellent vinegar. First-rate beer may be made from llouey, according to the subjoined receipt. Without reckoning the worth of the honey, it is found to stand the maker at a penny a gallon. And what hard-working man can have any excuse for sotiing in a pot-house, when he can have a drink so strengthening and Wholesome as this, if taken in moderation, with his wife too to share it with him alter the labour of the day is over ? Honey-cakes, such as Cerberus delighted in .'he had three mouths to fill, remember), may be made by any thrifty Bee- wife ; and many oiher niceties which her own talent will lead her to try. I believe that clear-tun honey will do very well lor preserving, though I have never yet seen it tried. No one can fear having too much honey, if it can be used for all these purposes. I have a great opinion of its virtues, though I do not sirig them in quite so lofty a strain as good old Sir John More.

BEES' ENEMIES. There is no greater foe to Bees than man. Alas ! tfrat it should be so ! What with mismanagement, what with neglect, what with mistaken kindness, the poor Bee has a sorry time of it from him who ought to be his guardian and fiiend ; and yet she knows full well how to repay her master's care, and, if I mistake not, becomes attached even to his person. Much of the ill-treatment which the Bee receives from her owner springs doubtless from ignorance ; and this little manual may, I hopv-, go some way towards lessening the evil.' Let my Bee-pupil but k°ep the&e maxims constantly in mind :—": — " That if he is to succeed with his Bees, it must lie by following nature, not by thvoartiny it." — '* That one lesson which his Bees teach him :s: s worth a dozen which he can learn from this or any I other Bee-books. You may, il you will but use your eyes and reason, and take advice from those who are able to give it to you, change sides, as it were, and become a Beefriend, instead of a Bee-enemy. But there are other foes of the poor Bee who cannot be taught belter manners, because they ha\e no reason to work up^n ; they are their " natural enemies," as an Englishman once used lo think himself of the French. And I will now give you, who are on the Bees' side, short and plain directions for destroying, or at least guarding against, these implacable foes. I. The most deadly are the spiders. It is a piteous thing to see a Bee, when it is returning from abroad heavily laden, rejoicing doubtless at the treasure which it is ::bout to add to the common stock, caught in the deadly snare which the spider has spread for her. Vain are her struggled ; they only serve to wind the fatal meshes more closely round her, and unless speedily extricated by a friendly hand, she perishes miserably. I say speedily ; for even if you release the captive, unless it be done almost immediately, you will find it impossible, to free her from the fetters in which she is bound; and although you return her to the mouth of her own hive, which she will try to enter, she will be turned out by her own mates as a sick and disabled cripple. Prevention, therefore, is better than cure. Brush away the cobwebs every time you visit your Bee-house (and I assume that you are .a constant visitant). Ouly a sluttish housewife allows a cobweb inside her, house, and cnly a careless Bee-master will suffer a cobweb to remain about his hives. In the first position, they are only a sign of untidiness ; in the latter, his children get hung up : — for such he ought to consider his Bees. 11. The mouse is a deadly enemy to the Bee, but not so much in this as in colder climates. When the Bees are in a state of torpor during several months of the year, then the mouse makes his insidious attacks, crawling through the doorway, if it be a large one, or even gnawing a passage through the straw ; and when once within a hive he commits fatal ravages, eating up combs, Bees, and all. Even in this milder climate the mouse-nuisance must be guarded against. I have lost two hives by mice in New Zealand. The way to fortify your stocks against their attacks is to pnt little wedges into the doorway of your hives during the winter, when your Bees are comparatively weak, though they have not such a total intermission of labour in this as in our Northern Land. The wedge must be

so arranged as to leave free passage for one or two Bees at a time, and yel they must be close enough to prevent a mouse from creeping in. As the warm weather comes on, take out one or two wedges, so that the door-way may be always proportionate to the Bees which pass through it. 111. The Bee-moth, or rather the grub which springs from the eggs which it lays, is a contemptible little creature to look at, but does great damage when it gets firmly established in an apiary. You may often find it lurking between the edge of the hive and ihe bottom board, which s>eems to be a favouiite place with the parent moth to lay her eggs in* The produce therrof is a little white grub, about half an inch long, all soft and defenceless, except his head, which is covered with a \ ard case of armour ; and you may be pretty sure that thi:> is the only part of his person which he pops out of his burrow, or else the Bees would make short wotk of him. '- In America, I find from a Bee-book which an unseen Bee-friend sent me from that place, this moth has committed fearful ravages (for I suppose it is that which they call the Miller,) an! has destroyed the apiaiiet. of whole districts. In this country it has not made bo much head. But still the prudent Bee-mas-ter had better beware of it in time. Prevention is here a-^ain better than cure. About twice a year, in spring and autumn, shift the bottom boards of all your hives* ; clean them well by scraping them, or even planing them, and if there are any signs of this grub, pour scald ng water upon them. The place where they chiefly harbour is between the hive and its bottom board, so that the closer they fit one to the other the better. I have seen these little hardheaded creatures tunnelling even in the solid wood of the bottom boards. ALo clean the edge of the hive belore you put it down again, remembering what I said about turning the combs np in their own planes, and that. a few puffs of smoke, blown into the hives before you move it, will take away from the Bees all inclination to sting. When a hive is weak, and the children of the waxmoth numerous, they no longer content themselves with lying hid between the hive and iis bottom board, but push their ravages amongst the empty combs* burrowing in them, and spinning their nasiy webs, which the Bees hate great difficulty in getting rid of. So )cm must come to their aid. They themselves t>how you how to act ; for a strong swa m gnaws away and carries out p'ecemeal every bit of comb which contains any of these grubs. A weak hive seems to hive it up in despair. So, to use the words of De Gelien, " the only means of saving the colony is to imitate the surgeon, who cuts off a diseased limb to save the rest. Every bit of infected comb must be cut out, leaving only those occupied by the Bees." This may be easily done by means of the comb-kuife, which 1 have figured and described in a former letter. The odd-shaped holes which are often found in the middle of combs in an old hive, are made, I doubt not, by the Bees having .cut out an infected part. A curious poiut here arises connected more with natural history, and the distribution of living creatures over the surface of this globe of ours, than with the management of Bees ; and yet 1 will not pass it altogether by. It is this : Supposing this wax-grub is the same as that which is the pest of European and American apiaries, how did it come to these far away isles? Were the eggs or grubs brought in the first hive which arr.ved here from New South Wales ? At all events this question, unsolved as I am content to leave it, leads to these practical results :—: — Ist, That it is of great importance thoroughly to cleanse old hives into which new swarms are put, by scraping and scalding them ; and 2ndly, That where Bees are sent to a distant station, be very careful to send them in clean hives or boxes, in which it is next to an impossibility that any grub or egg of the Bee-moth can harbour; and then it will be curious to see bow long the Bees remain free from the persecution of their " natural enemies." IV. All these enemies to the pooi Bee are common both in England and New Zealand. With them the Bees, and the Bee-master as their ally, have to fight in both lands. But there is another foe peculiar to New Z c ahnd of a very nasty nature. I mean that stinking beetle, whose real name is " kekereru," but which has been transmogrified by Pakehas into cockeredoo. Wheu A hive dwindles away to nothing, and the Bee-master turns up his hive to see what is the cause and extent of the damage, he will often find a number o! these black rascals in possession of the empty combs. 1 do not think they ever have the impudence to push their way into a fully occupied hive ; but when a swarm becomes weak, they creep in by stealth. A stock which has lost heart from the death of its Queen, and its inability to replace her, will not make any vigorous efforts to expel these intruders, tin ugh they continue for a time to work a little in very fine weather. When at last they come to

nothing, and the Bee-master turns up his deserted hive, to see what has been the cause o* his Joss, he finds these k^kererus skulking away between t lie imply comb.*, and thinks, naturally enough, that they sire to blame, whilst they are rather the result t 1 «ii the cause of the ruin. A strong stock it. well able to defend itself against these intruder*. Just dropone of them, or a spider into an observatory hive, and yau will see them turn him out quickly enough, " hand-over-hand," as I have heard a sailor say. But jet if is well to k/ep your apiaty as free as possible from these crawling stink-pols. Put your loot upon one whenever you meet him, and have as little shelter for them about your Bee house as may be. For this reason, I like to have my hives^ even though they be of straw, standing under one »oof common to them all, rather than each protected by its own hackle* Nothing indeed is* more si htly about a cottage than a row of (hes-e conical roofs; only uiimi, if your hives are protected m this way, to lilt up the hackles every now and then, to see il these Bee-enemies are harbomitig there. If you find them, take the law into your own hands. Fowls should he kept away fiom an apiary ; they are ver/ dcsu active} ami when they once get a ta&te of the Bees, will stand near the mouth of the hive, and snap them up as they come out. Here the letnedy is self-evident ; Keep your Bees and your fowls apaif. The large species of dragon-flies catch at great many ; and many a Queen, I fancy, falls a v.ctim to these bitds of ptcy. The Queen is heavier of flight than a common Bee, and thus is more easily captured. 1 have seen the large dragon*fly " Hawking" the Bees, just as a kite does the small b rds, and beat ing them away in her sharp mandibles. Knock these robbers down whenever you can. They are not very numerous. There are rn'c.ny of the New Zealand birds which, I doubt not, sieze the Bees in their flight. The kurimako I have taken in the fact; and I strongly suspect the mi, and other honey-eating birds. They find it less trouble, I suppose, to gobble up the Bee, with its burden of honey inside, rather than gather the honey, like honest birds, from 1 a number of flowets for their own consumption. Whatever kind of bird you catch in this net of piracy, show no mercy, but shoot a number, and hang them up as scirecrows. I shall be ennbus to know whether New Zf aland birds have made a sufficient advance in colorization to" take this warning. '/ But pll these enemies of the Bees are nothing when compared with the Bees themselves. The enemies I have spoken of attack and kill the Bees single-handed, whilst a piratical hive sends out its squadrons to overpower and rob the hive which it has fixed on as the object of its attack. None but the weak hives are" rob' cd. I mean, weak in Bees j for a two year old stock, which is lor t>onie cause or other dwindling awayi has often a large store of honey. So, unite the Bees of a hive which is m this condition to its neighbour ; or, still better, to some friend's Bees at a distance, as explained in its proper place. A young Bee-master may not know at first when the robbers are at work. He will see as much bustle at the door of the hive which is being pillaged, as at any of his most prosperous stocks. Crowds of Bees are rushing in and out, and iill seems well. But look a little closer, and you will find that the Bees aie running into the hive with their honey-bags empty, and returning with them full. How do I know, you may ask, whether a Bee is laden or not ? They do not, if is trae, carry their load of honey so as to be seen ; but when a Bee has its honey -bag quite full, the rings of her abdomen are all distended, and tHe etui of it even drags along the ground } whilst a light Bee carries her tail like a pointer's, straight out. Watch at the door of your hive on a fine working day, and you will soon see the difference. Every minute takes something away from the store of the hive, instead of adding 'to it. Lift up the hive gently, after blowing a few whiffs of smoke into the doorway, and you will most likely find the bottom board of the hive covered with dead Bees, the hive fal.en in a vain attempt to defend themselves against the robbers. They have died, fighting bravely in defence of their homes and treasures. The time for prevention* is now past. The .only thing to do is to use (he smoker : drive away the robbers from the combs, and secure all that is left to yourself. If you are aware of an attempt to plunder at an early stage of the proceedings, stop up the hive which is attacked at once, by putting ' little wedges in the door-way, so that a passage may be left for the air, but not for the robbers. If the attempt is made in the middle of the day, when a number of Bees are out at work, those who return home laden will of course be a good deal surprised to find the door of their own hive closed against them. But there is no cure for it ; they must wait patiently till evening, for then you may open the door. The most certain remedy against robberies is to remove the hive which is attacked a mile .

or two off. Set it in some sheltered place, and leave it there till all danger of farther attack is over. But if your apiary is fully stocked, and you have no particular reason for wishing to save this hive, the shortest and best way is to unite the Bees, and take the honey and wax for yourself. So much for Bees' Enemies, and the means of guarding against them. (To be continued.)

By the Rev. W. C. Cotton, M.A.