For the rest, the hives must be so made that heat will be perfectly retained in the cold season, and as perfectly excluded during the sultriest time of year. Double walls round the brood-chamber are a necessity in the changeable British climate, where chilly days are always probable during ten months out of the twelve.
As well as honey-production, the bee-farmer will find an equal source of profit in the production of wax. Just as there is nothing like leather, beeswax holds its own as a marketable commodity in spite of paraffin substitutes. But if it is almost universally degraded by adulteration, the fault lies with the beemen, who have never seriously attempted to meet the demand for it. Wax-production on a large scale is perfectly feasible, and there is little doubt that it could be developed into an important British industry, as it used to be in mediæval days. Yet these are times of revolution: the honey-bee may yet find herself entirely restored to her old national avocation—of bringing light to our darkness, and to our bodies one of the best and purest of foods.
CHAPTER XVII BEE-KEEPING AND THE SIMPLE LIFE
IT is a quality of English sunshine that it comes and goes capriciously, so that no man may be sure of the comradeship of his shadow from day to day. But when there is sunshine in England, it always seems an abiding, permanent force. The grey of yesterday, and the patter-song of the rain on the leaves, were only a dream. You were sleeping under the changeless blue of a summer night, and had but a vision of weeping, drab skies, gone now with the joy that comes in the morning. And to-morrow, when perhaps the old wild scurry of storm-cloud is alive overhead, and all the house resounds with the runnel-music from the pouring eaves, still it will be only a dream. Of a surety you will tell yourself so, as the sun breaks through the griddle of cloud, and the wind relents, and the Dutchman can get to his tailoring; and when you are stepping out amidst the swamp and glitter and rehabilitation of life, as glad of it all as the finches and butterflies that sweep on before you down the lane. The sun shines: you know it has always shone, changeless as Time itself.
With such a faith—unfounded and therefore uncontestable—I came under the glow of one brave June morning, threading field after field of blossoming clover until I stood at the gate of the bee-garden over against the hill. With its name I had long been familiar, for in the county paper there was always the little five-line advertisement, quaintly worded, announcing honey for sale. But I had never yet seen it, nor, indeed, ever set foot in this part of the good Sussex land. So, on this brimming June morning, giving rein for once to the indolent Shank’s mare of moods that is fated to carry me, I set out into the bright sloth, the joyous hastelessness, of the day; and came at length to my destination—to the bee-garden that nestles under the green Downland hills.