lo Dec. 1909.] Production and Marketing of Beesivax. 773 



foiling add about i pint of water, and then well stir. Thi.s becomes a jelly 

 when cold, and every 10 lbs. should be mixed with 40 gallons of water 

 The above amounts to about 160 gallons of wash. 



It is not advisable to apply any spray wash within three days of the pre- 

 vious one. Care should also be taken 'that the nozzle of the spray pump 

 is directed upwards .so as to reach the underside of the leaves. 



All stakes, after having been u.sed for tomatoes, &c., should be treated 

 Avith boiling water before being used again ; by this means the eggs of the 

 spider will be destroyed. 



For the red spider eggs on apple trees, red oil has proved successful ; 

 and this is generallv used in wnnter when the animals are dormant. 



PRODUCTION AND MARKETING OF BEESWAX. 



R. Beulnie, President. Victorian Apiarists' Association. 



Beeswax, the secondary product of the apiary, is an article of com- 

 merce which is always in 'demand, with but little variation in prices for 

 standard samples. 



The production of wax by the honey bee is in a certain ratio to that 

 of honey ; thus, bees in trees or box hives yield, on the average, one pound 

 ■of wax 'to twenty pounds of hone\ . With the introduction of the bar 

 frame hive, and the method of extracting the honey from the combs arid 

 returning them to the \\\\q to be refilled with honey by the bees, the ratio 

 ■of wax to honey has been considerably altered and stands at i to 80. In 

 other words, the production of extracted honey for the same weight of 

 wax is four times that of the primiti\e method of cutting out the combs 

 to obtain the honey. As a result, the price of honey has declined while 

 that of wax has advanced during recent years. The wax is the product of 

 a transformation of the honey or nectar when retained in the body of the 

 bee for a time under certain conditions. Many attempts have been made 

 to turn surplus honev into wax by feeding it back to the bees, but none 

 have proved successful from a commercial point of view. While, there- 

 fore, the proportion of wax to honey cannot be profitably increased, so 

 far as its production is concerned, there is room for much improvement in 

 the methods of obtaining the wax from the combs, in the handling, refin- 

 ing and marketing. 



Thousands of pounds of beeswax are annually thrown away, or burned 

 with old black brood combs, because the old-fashioned method of boiling 

 the combs in a bag submerged under water fails in obtaining more than a 

 mere fraction of the w^ax contained in them. New comb consists entirely 

 of wax and is white or yellow in colour, according to the flora from which 

 the bees obtained the nectar converted into wax. When brood is reared 

 in the cells the comb first becomes brow^n and, after a time, black, tough. 

 and heavy. Each bee larva, before changing to the chrysalis .stage, spins 

 a cocoon, and as generation succeeds generation in the same cells old brood 

 comb contains numbers of these in each cell, one inside the other ; but, 

 although the appearance of the comb is entirely changed, the original w^ax 

 cells are still there. When old brood comb is dissolved by boiling in 

 water each of the cocoons set loose bv the melting of the comb become'^ 



