"A good deal. If you change 'em around any, and there happens to be some cells that aren't capped over, the honey will run out."
Then Adrian showed Roger that the honey-comb, which is familiar to almost every one, was composed of a number of openings or cells, shaped like a hexagon. These cells were double, there being two sets of them, back and front, in each cap, and they were divided down the middle by a wall of wax. The wise bees gave to each cell a downward slant toward this dividing wall, so that when they had filled them with honey the sweet stuff would not run out. Then, as a further precaution, each tiny opening was sealed over with wax. But sometimes the bees neglected to seal up one or two cells in a cap, and unless these particular ones were kept upright, with the openings slanting downward, there would be a fine mess.
"These caps are pretty well sealed," observed Adrian, "but you always have to be careful," and he was on the lookout to see that no mistakes were made.
The two boys now busied themselves with scraping off the dried wax from the outside of the caps, and, as each one was finished it was placed in a pasteboard box, labelled with the contents "White clover honey," and with Mr. Kimball's name and address.
"Dad's got a good honey crop this year," commented Adrian. "Plenty of white clover, which sells better than buckwheat, though I don't like it so well as the dark honey."
"What do they call it buckwheat for? Because it's made from buckwheat flour?"
"Land no. Because it's from the sweet juices of the buckwheat flowers. Lots of people say buckwheat honey is too strong for 'em, but we all like it better than clover, which is made from clover blossoms. Buckwheat seems to have a sort of 'whang' to it, dad says."
"Wa'al, boys, how ye makin' out?" asked a deep voice from the doorway, and Mr. Kimball entered the storeroom.
"All right, I guess," answered Roger.
"Glad t' hear it. We'll make a reg'lar bee-farmer out a' ye 'fore ye git home."