THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



801 



two Directors to succeed the two whose term 

 of office expires each year, shall be elected 

 by ballot duriuy the mouth of December of 

 each year by a mnjority vote of the members 

 voting; and the Board of Directors shall 

 prescribe how all votes of the members 

 shall be takeu. " 



That the words " at the annual meeting, " 

 iu Section ;! of Article VI be substituted by 

 the words, " Whenever requested by him; to 

 make a report at the annual meeting of the 

 Union, and whenever requested to do so by 

 the Board of Directors, of all moneys re- 

 ceived and paid out by him since the last 

 annual meeting. " 



That Section ."> of Article VI be amended 

 so as to read: " At the time of sending the 

 ballots to the members for the annual elec- 

 tion, he shall alst) send to each member a 

 list of the names of all members, and an 

 itemized statment of all receipts and ex- 

 penditures of the funds of the Union by the 

 Board of Directors, and a report of the work 

 done by said Board of Directors." 



That the words " altered or, " in Article X, 

 be erased. 



A. B. Mason, Sec. 



The Advantages of Foundation. 



A Mr. Deacon of Africa has been having 

 some rather spicy articles iu the American 

 Bee .Journal, ai>d in one of them he con- 

 demned comb foundation iu a sort of whole- 

 sale way. The editor of the journal invited 

 Mr. C. P. Dadant to reply to the Deacon, 

 and here is what he says. 



" In beginning this article on a subject 

 which interests me financially as well as 

 theoretically, I wish to state to the readers 

 that I write this reply to S. A. Deacon's 

 article on page 57'.), at the special request of 

 the editor of the American Bee Journal, 

 otherwise it would not have been written, 

 for I loathe to carry on what is popularly 

 termed as ' ax-grinding. ' With this expla- 

 nation I will take up the subject. 



As everybody knows, there are three main 

 advantages claimed for the use of full sheets 

 of foundation, viz: 1st, securing straight 

 combs; lind, securing worker-combs; 8rd, 

 saving the cost of the comb to the bees. 

 Mr. Deacon makes light of the first of these 

 advantages, holding that starters made by 

 running molten wax along the upper bars 

 of the frames will insure <iuite sufficiently 

 straight combs. I will make bold to venture 

 the assertion that Mr. D. has but little ex- 

 perience in the matter, or he would not 

 make so sweei)ing an assertion. We intro- 

 duced the practice of making a starter of 

 molten wax on the frames in this country, 

 and readers of the American Bee .If)urnal, 

 who have its volumes for :'.<) years past, can 

 ascertain that we advertised and sold what 

 we called the comb-guide press in 1S70-74 to 

 make these guides. The use of this press is 

 certainly a help, but it is far from succeeding 

 in every instance, and as it makes a very 



shallow guide it is not unusual for the bees 

 to deviate from it after carrying the comb 

 down a couple of inches and fastening the 

 end of it to the edge of the next side bar, 

 tlius uniting two frames. 



Even with the use of comb foundation in 

 narrow strips— I will appeal to the memory 

 of any reader who has luid much experience 

 — does it not often happen that the comljs 

 are thus warped by the bees and so joined 

 together that they have to be cut apart ? 

 Before we used sheets of foundation, we 

 were accustomed to carry with us to the 

 apiary a wash-pan and a towel, as in hand- 

 ling the combs we would often cause honey 

 to run and get our fingers iu it. We have no 

 longer any such trouble, and when the foun- 

 dation is put in correctly the combs are at 

 all times as straight as a board. This i> of 

 more importance than a beginner would 

 think, for the breaking of combs causes 

 leakage, which in turu causes robbing 

 among the colonies, and delays the apiarist, 

 besides risking the safety of the colony. 



Mr. Deacon further takes issue with the 

 fact that the foundation saves a great deal 

 of expense to the bees. He says that ' care- 

 ful experiments have conclusively demon- 

 strated that it takes leas than six pounds of 

 honey to make one pound of comb.' Pray, 

 who made those varefxd experiments ? 

 Have we had more careful and more accurate 

 experimenters than Dumas, Milne-Edwards, 

 and Berlepsch ? These men spent lives in 

 making tests and experiments. Of late 

 years, Viallon and others made experiments 

 on combs built by swarms, but in every in- 

 stance they failed to take into account the 

 greater amount of honey consumed by a 

 colony that could breed at once in built 

 combs, as compared with the colony that 

 had to build its combs, and this increase of 

 population surely is of great value to the 

 bee-keeper at the time when foundation is 

 usually furnished — at the opening of the 

 honey crop. 



All these experiments, when carefully ex- 

 amined, show that it takes from 7 to I.') 

 pounds of honey to produce one pound of 

 combin the very best circumstances. Neith- 

 er is this to be wondered at when we reflect 

 that to produce wax the bees have to digest 

 the honey, and it is (juite probable that 

 there is as much difference in the (juantity 

 of honey consumed under different circum- 

 stances to produce wax as there is in the 

 quantity of grain consumed by stock, under 

 different conditions, to produce fat. The 

 majority of practical bee-keepers in this 

 country are evidently of that opinion, and 

 to see the persistency with which they con- 

 tinue to spend their money for this article 

 (foundation) in large lots for apiaries, one 

 would come to the conclusion that the asser- 

 tions in favor of it cannot be altogether what 

 Mr. Deacon soelegantly calls 'rot, ridiculous 

 nonsense, rubbish, or ridiculously errone- 

 ous opinions.' 



I do not know what expprienoe the bee- 

 keepers of South Africa, like Mr. Deacon, 

 have in the bee-line, hut I do know that the 

 American bee-keeper does not usually fool- 

 ishly throw his money away. The average 



