Jan. 10. 1901. 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



23 



this way: I took a g'oodly number of pieces of comb that 

 had been drawn by the bees, and some natural comb, other 

 samples of comb that had been built upon different kinds of 

 foundation. And care was always taken in this case not to 

 use a comb that had been capt, because, if the comb had 

 been capt, it would have to be uncapt and the honey ex- 

 tracted. In that case, the ends of the comb would have to 

 be removed, so I always took a comb that had not been capt. 

 I found that by taking these samples of comb, scraping the 

 comb-cells all off from the foundation, the wax of the mid- 

 rib is left, and I consider these weigh the same perhaps in 

 natural comb — that the bees do thicken the surrounding 

 walls of the comb, so that they are heavier, as well as the 

 midrib of the comb, and that is brought out in some figures 

 that I have put upon these sheets of paper. In this chart — 

 I don't know whether you have read it or not — you will note 

 in this column is given the kind of foundation used, the 

 first lot having no foundation at all, being natural comb; 

 the next shows the thickness of the comb used. In this 

 column I have given the weight of the entire comb per 

 square inch. Suppose this was the comb, suppose it is an 

 inch thick; we have given here the weight of a square 

 inch of that comb. In the next two columns I have sepa- 

 rated the weight of the comb into two parts — the weight of 

 the midrib of that comb and the weight of the cell-walls in 

 that comb, so as to give the two separate. We will take 

 first the natural comb, which is 1.37 inches thick. You will 

 understand I could not get comb made to order, but had to 

 take samples out of the hive — the thickness as the bees had 

 made it, getting them as nearly alike as I could, and taking 

 the actual measures, comparing those that were nearest 

 alike. In case of natural comb 1.37 inches thick, a little 

 thicker than this comb here [indicating], the weight of that 

 comb alone per square inch was 13 grains; the weight of the 

 midrib averaging — I have given here in every case the av- 

 erage weight gotten by weighing quite a large number of 

 samples, not giving the different weights. In this column 

 I have given the weights of the cell-walls themselves — the 

 wax in the cell-wall. The wax in the cell-wall here weighed 

 10.8 grains ; in the midrib only 2.10 grains. This [indica- 

 ting] is a sample of deep-cell comb, comb built upon this 

 deep-cell foundation that was put out in 1888. Take the first 

 sample 1.44 inches. This is a little heavier than the 1.37, 

 the first one that I had in my samples to compare it with ; 

 the midrib there weighed 13 grains to the square inch ; here 

 it weighed 16.63 — a difference of 3.63 grains for this comb. 

 It is a little bit thicker, as vou will see. The difference in 

 the septum of the midrib is the difference between 2.1 and 

 3.7 ; the difference in the weight of the cells would be the 

 difference between 10.8 and 12 93 ; those are the only two 

 samples that are very close together in comparison with 

 those weighed. We might pass to another sample of this 

 deep-cell ; the comb weighed 14.9, almost IS grains to the 

 square inch; the comb here weighing 13 grains to the square 

 inch. 



A Member — You have one there in the natural comb 

 just exactly the same. 



Prof. Gillette— That is right. I want to call attention 

 first to the fact that this 1.13 style gives a heavier comb. 

 This is 11.6 grains to the square inch while the other was 

 10.11 vrhere it was 1.37 in thickness ; comparing these with 

 samples of comb of exactly the same thickness 1.13, the 

 whole comb weighed 9..^.^ grains to the sq. inch ; the whole 

 comb here weighed 14.9 or almost IS grains to the sq. inch ; 

 the midrib weighing 3.3; the cells themselves with the mid- 

 rib removed weighed 11.6 grains, whereas up here they 

 weighed 7.2 grains to the square inch. It is true in all the 

 cases, where these heavy foundations were used that the 

 weight of the cell-walls was increast as well as the weight 

 of the foundation. I want to call attention to one over- 

 statement in my bulletin which Pres. Root has also called 

 attention to. I stated that the increase in weight of the 

 cell-walls was greater than the increase in weight of the 

 midrib where the heavy foundations were used ; that is only 

 occasionally true. It is often true that the increast weight 

 of the comb is due more to the added wax in the cells than 

 to added wax in the midrib. The increast weight of the 

 comb is due to the increast wax in the cell-walls as well as 

 the increast wax in the heavier foundation where the heav- 

 ier foundations are used. That isn't true often where the 

 foundations are, for example, the extra-thin and the thin 

 foundation, and the rather shallow foundation put out by 

 the Root Company. I found with those the cell-walls in the 

 comb were just as light in many cases — in fact quite com- 

 monly so — as they were in the natural comb ; but it seems 

 to me it is proved beyond any doubt that if we add a large 

 amount of wax, either in the midrib or short cell-walls of 



the foundation, we will always increase quite perceptibly 

 the weight of the comb built upon that foundation. There 

 is one other point which I will take time to bring out and 

 that is: To what extent do we economize the secretion of 

 the wax when we give bees comb foundation to build comb 

 upon ? To make the question a little clearer, if we give 

 bees foundation that has wax enough in it already to build 

 the whole comb, will they then secrete any wax, or use that 

 wax and build the comb up? To bring that point out, let 

 us refer to the figures that I have already upon the board. 

 I might go on thru the list of these, but I think the examples 



I have used are enough. I used one foundation, this very 

 heavy foundation which would average 11 grains to the 

 square inch when cut up. Natural comb built by the bees, 

 the average weight I found to be 10 grains to the square 

 inch, the comb being one inch thick in both cases — 10 grains 

 to the square inch in the natural built comb, where it was 



II grains to the square inch in this foundation itself. 

 Those are samples of comb one inch thick [indicating.] 



Dr. Mason — One inch thick or one inch square ? 



Prof. Gillette — It is a comb one inch square. The comb 

 built upon these heavy foundations, built out one inch thick, 

 weighed 18', grains to the square inch. Natural comb, as 

 I told you, averaged only In grains to the square inch. The 

 bees then having one grain to the square inch more wax 

 than they needed, added to that foundation 8', grains more 

 of wax. In other words, you gave your bees 18' 2 grains of 

 wax to save their secreting 2 '2 grains of wax, because 2>^ 

 grains added to 7 '2 make the 10 grains the bees would have 

 used if they built this themselves. Take the lighter foun- 

 dation, the medium Root foundation, running, I think, 

 about 7 sheets to the pound, that foundation averages 8.4 

 grains to the square inch. The comb built upon it weighed 

 16,'2 grains to the square inch ; that is, comb one inch thick, 

 the bees added to that foundation so as to make it weigh 6;'2 

 grains to the square inch more than that natural comb 

 would have weighed if they had made it all themselves. 

 You give the bees 8.4 to save them from secreting 3.5 grains 

 of wax. Without going thru the figures of the different 

 weights, I found, I might say, that held thru all the tests I 

 made. That is, to all these heavier foundations the bees 

 still added a very large amount of wax from their own se- 

 cretions, altho they did not need to do it. It seems to me 

 that we only economize the secretions of the wax on the 

 part of the bees to a very small extent by giving them wax 

 in the foundation. It seems to be the nature of the bees 

 when building comb to secrete wax, they go on eating honey, 

 I have no doubt, and secreting the wax to a very large ex- 

 tent, even tho wax was given them to begin with. Then 

 what kind of a foundation can we use that would be most 

 economical in comb building ? Without using the figures, 

 I might simply say I found the greatest economy appar- 

 ently from my own measurements to be in the foundation 

 which has, as measured, as nearly the weight of the natural 

 comb midrib as you can get it — the foundation with the mid- 

 rib just as nearthe natural as you could get it, and with not 

 a very large amount of wax in the cell-walls of the foun- 

 dation. I presume you have all used, to some extent, this 

 rather short deep foundation. It seems to me that contains 

 about as much wax in the cell-walls as can be given with 

 the greatest economy in the building of the comb. I be- 

 lieve that is all that I will take time to tell you about now, 

 unless you wish to ask questions, except simply to call your 

 attention to some of the samples that I have here. In these 

 little paper boxes, I have placed samples of sections of comb 

 and of foundations, and many of them are arranged in this 

 way — one of them showing the section of the foundation 

 and the other the section of the comb built upon that foun- 

 dation. I would like to have you examine the two and com- 

 pare them, and see if you can see with your naked eye the 

 comb built upon the foundation and midrib thinner than 

 that built upon the foundation. Some samples show plainly, 

 and I have markt it in this way: A sample markt A would 

 be a sample of a foundation cut thru ; a sample markt A A 

 would be a sample of the comb built upon that foundation. 

 The same is true of B, C, D, and so on. By bearing that in 

 mind, you can tell which is the section of the foundation 

 and which the section of the comb built upon it. I have 

 also one or two sections here of the comb cut at right angles 

 to the cells, and I would like to have you see how very deli- 

 cate and beautiful the section of the natural comb is in 

 that way. Also on these two pieces of boards, I have a 

 sample of foundation and also a sample of the septum of 

 comb built upon that foundation, and you can make com- 

 parisons of them. These can be past around. 



D. H. Coggshall— I have noticed where we run for ex- 

 tracted hone}', in increasing my amount of combs for ex- 



