The light snow covered the path through the bee-farm, and whitened the roof of every hive.  In the red winter it looked more like a human city than ever, with its long double rows of miniature houses stretching away into the dusk on either hand, and its broad central thoroughfare, where the larger hives crowded shoulder to shoulder, casting their black shadows over the snow.  
The bee-master led the way towards the extracting-house at the end of the garden, as full of his work, seemingly, as ever he had been in the press of summer days.  There was noise enough going on in the long lighted building ahead of us, but I missed the droning song of the great extractor itself.
 
“No; we have done with honey work for this year,” said the old bee-man.  “It is all bottled and cased long ago, and most of it gone to London.  But there’s work enough still, as you’ll see.  The bees get their long rest in the winter; but, on a big honey-farm, the humans must work all the year round.”
 
As we drew into the zone of light from the windows, many sounds that from afar had seemed incongruous enough on the silent, frost-bound evening began to explain themselves.  The whole building was full of busy life.  A furnace roared under a great caldron of smoking , which the foreman was vigorously stirring.  In the far corner an oil engine clanked and spluttered.  A circular saw was screaming through a baulk of timber, slicing it up into thin as a man would turn over the leaves of a book.  Planing machines and hammers and handsaws innumerable added their voices to the general chorus; and out of the shining steel of an that looked half printing-press and half clothes-wringer there flowed sheet after sheet of some golden material, the use of which I could only dimly guess at.
 
But I had time only for one swift glance at this mysterious monster.  The bee-master gripped me by the arm and drew me towards the furnace.
 
“This is bee-candy,” he explained, “winter food for the hives.  We make a lot of it and send it all over the country.  But it’s work.  When the syrup comes to the galloping-point it must boil for one minute, no more and no less.  If we boil it too little it won’t set, and if too much it goes hard, and the bees can’t take it.”
 
He took up his station now, watch in hand, close to the man who was stirring, while two or three others looked anxiously on.
 
“Time!” shouted the bee-master.
 
The great caldron swung off the stove on its suspending chain.  Near the fire stood a water tank, and into this the big of boiling syrup was p. 88suddenly right up to the brim, the stirrer labouring all the time at the grey mass more furiously than ever.
 
“The quicker we can cool it the better it is,” explained the old bee-keeper, through the steam.  He was peering into the caldron as he , watching the syrup change from dark clear grey to a dirty white, like half-thawed snow.  Now he gave a sudden signal.  A strong rod was instantly passed through the handles of the caldron.  The vessel was whisked out of its icy bath and borne rapidly away.  Following hard upon its heels, we saw the bearers halt near some long, low trestle-tables, where hundreds of little wooden boxes were ranged side by side.  Into these the thick, sludgy syrup was poured as rapidly as possible, until all were filled.
 
“Each box,” said the bee-master, as we watched the candy gradually setting snow-white in its wooden frames, “each box holds about a pound.  The box is put into the hive upside-down on the top of the comb-frames, just over the cluster of bees; and the bottom is because then you can see when the candy is , and the time has come to put on another case.  What is it made of?  Well, every has his own private formula, and mine is a secret like the rest.  But it is sugar, mostly—cane-sugar.  Beet-sugar will not do; it is injurious to the bees.
 
“But candy-making,” he went on, as we moved slowly through the building, “is by no means the only winter work on a bee-farm.  There are the hives to make for next season; all those we shall need for ourselves, and hundreds more we sell in the spring, either empty or stocked with bees.  Then here is the foundation mill.”
 
He turned to the contrivance I had noticed on my entry.  The thin sheets of material, like crinkled glass, were still flowing out between the rollers.  He took a sheet of it as it fell, and held it up to the light.  A fine hexagonal pattern covered it completely from edge to edge.
 
“This,” he said, “we call super-foundation.  It is pure refined wax, rolled into sheets as thin as paper, and milled on both sides wit............