during the dull season, when no honey can
be procured, be most profitably employed in building spare comb, to be
used in strengthening feeble stocks, and for a great variety of
purposes. Give me the means of cheaply obtaining large amounts of comb,
and I have almost found the philosopher's stone in bee keeping.

The building of comb is carried on with the greatest activity in the
night, while the honey is gathered by day. Thus no time is lost. If the
weather is too forbidding to allow the bees to go abroad, the combs are
very rapidly constructed, as the labor is carried on both by day and by
night. On the return of a fair day, the bees gather unusual quantities
of honey, as they have plenty of room for its storage. Thus it often
happens, that by their wise economy of time, they actually lose nothing,
even if confined, for several days, to their hive.

"How doth the little busy bee, improve each _shining_ hour!"

The poet might with equal truth have described her, as improving the
gloomy days, and the dark nights, in her useful labors.

It is an interesting fact, which I do not remember ever to have seen
particularly noticed by any writer, that honey gathering, and comb
building, go on simultaneously; so that when one stops, the other ceases
also. I have repeatedly observed, that as soon as the honey harvest
fails, the bees intermit their labors in building new comb, even when
large portions of their hive are unfilled. They might enlarge their
combs by using some of their stores; but then they would incur the risk
of perishing in the winter, by starvation. When honey no longer abounds
in the fields, it is wisely ordered, that they should not consume their
hoarded treasures, in expectation of further supplies, which may never
come. I do not believe, that any other safe rule could have been given
them; and if honey gathering was our business, with all our boasted
reason, we should be obliged to adopt the very same course.

Wax is one of the best non-conductors of heat, so that when it is warmed
by the animal heat of the bees, it can more easily be worked, than if it
parted with its heat too readily. By this property, the combs serve also
to keep the bees warm, and there is not so much risk of the honey
candying in the cells, or the combs cracking with frost. If wax was a
good conductor of heat, the combs would often be icy cold, moisture
would condense and freeze upon them, and they would fail to answer the
ends fo