Nov. 28, 1901. 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL, 



757 



the wax from the press the softer the 

 wax. The wax from cappiiiifs should 

 always be used in foundation for sec- 

 tions. It is nicer. 



Mr.; Geramill — The capping^s from 

 combs that are melted in the solar ex- 

 tractor are a great deal harder. There 

 are other things in the cappings be- 

 sides wax. 



A Member — I was speaking- of old 

 wax that is gotten out by any process. 

 Doesn't wax by age lose something 

 that it requires? 



Mr. Gemmill — I couldn't say in that 

 respect. 



Dr. Miller — Now. I think you are all 

 such careful bee-keepers that you never 

 have combs melt in the sun. A cer- 

 tain bee-keeper who lives where I do 

 sometimes has that happen, and the 

 thing that surprises me is the amount 

 of yellow wax that the sun wax-ex- 

 tractor will get; and another thing that 

 surprises me is the softness of that 

 wax. and I very much doubt if there is 

 any hardness increased in that wax. 

 Mr. McEvoy— I think that is correct. 

 Mr. Callbreath— Should the combs 

 be soaked beforehand, or doesn't that 

 make any difference? 



Mr. Gemmill — It doesn't make any 

 difference where you use boiling water 

 and pressure, provided you use pres- 

 sure afterwards. Of course, according 

 to the Dadant plan, you soaked the 

 combs for 48 hours before, those hav- 

 ing many cocoons and much pollen, 

 and then immersing them in the boil- 

 ing water. But the point is this, that 

 if you use pressure you don't require 

 the same amount of boiling, because 

 you force the wax right through the 

 pollen. 



Mr. Vinal — As I was going to say, I 

 think this foundation the bees would 

 not accept was a soft grade of founda- 

 tion, and my idea was that the wax by 

 age loses something that the bees re- 

 quire in order to mould their founda- 

 tion over: and a foundation not having 

 that, the bees will not work it as rap- 

 idly as they will foundation made 

 from new wax. This is my idea, be- 

 cause my bees would not work certain 

 foundation. 



Mr. Gemmill — I would like to say 

 that since using the press, I have 

 noticed quite a number of bee-keepers 

 who were retaining old combs that 

 were defective in some way, and I 

 might mention Mr. Hall, of Ontario, 

 for one, who was going to make foun- 

 dation one day, and I got my son to go 

 down to assist him. My son took the 

 press down with him, and all the time 

 he was making foundation in the fore- 

 noon he was talking press; and at the 

 noon-hour my boy went out and got 

 the press a-going, and got a lot of the 

 slumgum that Mr. Hall had been throw- 

 ing away, and began pressing the wax 

 out of it. Mr. Hall looked at it a mo- 

 ment, and said he would get a press. 

 He got a press and has melted up sev- 

 eral thousand combs since, and he 

 doesn't want any old combs around his 

 yard now. He is a very conservative 

 man in his ideas. I think there are 

 many beekeepers here who, if they 

 were using a press with high pressure, 

 would be pleased with the results. 



Mr. Howe — This g-entleman asked 

 about foundation being acceptable to 

 the bees after getting old. I had some 

 foundation that was put in sections 

 four years ago, and I kept it where it 

 was dark, and I couldn't see but what 



the bees accepted this foundation as 

 readily as they did new foundation 

 put in this year. 



Mr. Benton— I want to ask Mr. Gem- 

 mill if it wouldn't answer, in applying 

 that pressure, to put a heavy weight on 

 instead of being obliged to watch it 

 and screw it down, so that it would act 

 automatically? 



Mr. Gemmill — You would have to 

 use great pressure, and it would have 

 to be coming down constantly. 



Mr. Benton — It would be coming 

 down constantly. 



Mr. Gemmill — You would require a 

 great weight. People have no concep- 

 tion of what a screw will do in regard 

 to the amount of pounds that it will 

 press down, and you want to be sure, 

 in getting the press, to get a machine 

 that will have a strong screw. You 

 will be astonished at the amount of 

 pressure you can use. I wouldn't rec- 

 ommend a weight at all; you would 

 want to have hydraulic pressure, or 

 something of that kind, if you were 

 going to use a weight instead of a 

 screw. . 



Mr. West— I endorse the pressure of 

 getting out wax. I have used the pres- 

 sure, as has been mentioned, of press- 

 ing under water and letting the wax 

 rise to the top, and in every case I find 

 it is necessary now and then to raise 

 the screw to let the water in. But 

 since using that, we have gotten into 

 the habit of using a radically different 

 way of melting our wax. We use the 

 same tank, put our hot water and 

 combs in, and let them melt, and then 

 we have a dish that we lay in a cheese- 

 cloth, on one side, and we use a large 

 dipper — a 3 or 4 quart dipper to dip it 

 — and get that cheese-cloth and put the 

 pressure on there, and draw the wax 

 out in another place. We get the wax, 

 we think, pretty nearly clear in that 

 way. 



Mr. Gemmill — Of course, I am not 

 informed as to the best methods of ap- 

 plying the screw, but I say apply the 

 pressure in some form. 



Mr. Benton — The reason why I asked 

 the question in regard to the weight, it 

 seems to me we ought to give our Ger- 

 man friends some credit. We are apt 

 to poke fun at them and call them slow, 

 but they have been using the wax-press 

 all the time. 



Mr. Gemmill — I am not a German, 

 and have not come in contact with any 

 German bee-papers, but I understand 

 that Mr. Holtermann, formerly of the 

 Canadian Bee Journal, had made some 

 copy of the old German press, and, of 

 course, they were using the screw there 

 long before I knew anything about it 

 in that form. 



A. I. Root — The Germans were orig- 

 inal in the use of this press in connec- 

 tion with steam and hot water, and be- 

 cause they were original we named our 

 machine " (German, " because we 

 thought the credit ought to go where 

 it belongs. I found they had used it 

 12 or 15 years ago. 



Dr. Miller — If you are going to quote 

 the Germans, I think you ought to go 

 a little further and say that many of 

 them are beginning to abandon the 

 steam press for hot water, and they 

 are now saying that hot water is better 

 than the steam — under pressure, you 

 understand. 



Mr. Gemmill — By putting the combs 

 into the guntiy-s-acks and sinking thorn 

 under water more wax will be secured 



than in the steamer; the wax will rise 

 to the top, and if you do the pressing- 

 ill the hot water the water will carry 

 the wax to the surface. 



A. Laing — Last spring I melted up 

 about 100 pounds of wax. I tried the 

 same, wax-extractor that I had many- 

 times before, and I got somewhat dis- 

 couraged and discarded it for a good- 

 sized, ordinary kettle which I used on 

 the stove, with hot water, and I found 

 that I made about three times the prog-- 

 ress with the hot water in melting that 

 I did with steam. 



W. L. Coggshall — Hot water is the 

 thing to do it with, I think. It will do 

 it much better than steam, with me. I 

 use an ordinary caldron kettle, and I 

 can make 100 pounds of wax in half a 

 day without any trouble. 



Dr. Miller— Does Mr. Coggshall use 

 pressure? 



W. L. Coggshall — No, I haven "fused 

 pressure, but I think it is the proper 

 thing to do. I usually put the pres- 

 sure on by fastening a stick across the 

 top of the kettle and then put a screen 

 over the top and take the wax off the 

 top. It is the proper caper. I just put 

 an ordinary strainer over the top and 

 move it around and take the wax off. 



Mr. Laing — What kind of a kettle do 

 you use? 



Mr. Coggshall — A four-barrel kettle.- 

 Dr. Miller— Was that called the old' 

 Jones extracting kettle? Was there 

 pressure used? 



Mr. Laing — There was pressure used. 

 I have nothing against the pressure, 

 but the press I had was too small for 

 the purpose in the first place, and the 

 steam melted it more slowly, and for 

 that reason I melted the wax first, then 

 poured it into the kettle and put on the 

 pressure. 



Mr. Craig — The first set of wax- 

 presses that were sent out, that is with 

 the pressure, was an attachment to 

 what is known as the old Jones press, 

 and we found that it required too much 

 heat to generate the steam and so we 

 discouraged that, making a machine 

 with a copper bottom that sets down 

 in the stuff like an ordinary tea-kettle; 

 and this, we find, works very much 

 better, and requires very much less 

 heat. 



Mr. Alpaugh — Mr. Geramill has told 

 you more than I could tell you, about 

 five times over. I melted only a few 

 old combs, and I did it with hot water 

 and pressure, on Mr. Geramill's prin- 

 ciple. 



Mr. Gemmill — Mr. Alpaugh has an 

 idea in regard to this matter that 1 

 should like to hear. 



Mr. Alpaugh — My idea would be to 

 have a large melting tank, soniething- 

 you could get lots of stuff in, anyway, 

 and have a division in this, and in the 

 division a pair of rollers set perfectly 

 tight so that they would work on the 

 principle of a wringer, so that you 

 could wring the stuff' through from 

 one side to the other and keep the wax 

 back, which it would do if they were 

 set tight at the ends; and just keep 

 feeding it in thin, flat sheets. When 

 you come to press this old comb the 

 trouble is to get it in small enoug-h 

 quantities and not to have too slow a 

 job. My idea would be to feed it 

 through rollers in a thin layer and 

 grind it through under low pressure, 

 the same as wringing out clothes. 



Mr. McICvoy — How would it do to put 

 the combs through a cutting-box first? 



