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THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVm » 



American is about as practical a man as can 

 be fonud on the face of the earth. 



Mr. Deacon makes too many assertions 

 that have no foundatiou, for me to take 

 the time to answer them al'. There is too 

 much guess in his article. He says the 

 secretion of wax must go on in the hive, and 

 the scales are wasted when foundation is 

 used. This is not so. as there is always a 

 necessity of wax for lengthening the comb 

 and for sealing. 



He says the ase of foundation causes no 

 saving in time, and he wants us to try two 

 colonies side by side — one with starters, the 

 other with full sheets. Why doesn't he make 

 the test himself ? This has been tried by 

 thousands in this country, and they have 

 come to the conclusion that they want the 

 foundation. That is why so many hundreds 

 of thou'saudsof pounds are sold in America. 



Mr. Deacon says bee-keepers 'foolishly 

 imagine' that the bees can draw out the 

 foundation, and then goes on to explain 

 that this ' silly and most unreasonable be- 

 lief is all a mistake. Evidently, Mr. Dea- 

 con is speaking of that which he does not 

 know. Any little boy who has seen founda- 

 tion put into a hive, and taken out again 

 after the bees have worked upon it, has 

 seen that the looks of it are changed: that 

 is base and side walls are thinner, very per- 

 ceptibly so, and although they do add some 

 of their own wax, it is certain, and can- 

 not be disproven. that they do make the 

 greater part of the comb out of the wax 

 that is thus furnished them. 



Now for the opinion of Mr. Simmins, for 

 whom I have great regard, and whom the 

 gentleman quotes. Mr. Simmins savs 

 there is no advantage in sidewalls, and he 

 finds them all scraped off. I beg pardon, 

 but the foundation Mr. Simmins used was 

 surely not of the proper kind, as we have 

 never seen this, and I doubt whether a sin- 

 gle man can be found in this country who 

 will assert such a thing. The bees do not 

 scrape off the sidewalls, if they can use the 

 foundation at all, but, on the contrary, they 

 remodel them and use the wax in them to 

 deepen the cell, Mr. Deacon to the contrary 

 notwithstanding. We have tried founda- 

 tion without sidewalls at all, and it has not 

 proven satisfactory. 



Mr. Deacon admits that the use of foun- 

 dation does away with the rearing of so 

 many drones, hut he makes light of it. 

 And yet if foundation is properly hung in 

 the hive so that it will not sag, the u«e of 

 one sheet in place of drone-comb will pay 

 for that sheet, nay, for the entire supply of 

 that hive in one season. 



To conclude, I will advise Mr. Deacon, 

 instead of ' straining at gnats and swallow- 

 ing whole caravans of camels,' as he says, 

 to make some thorough experiments, and 

 stop writing until then, for it does not do 

 him any good to try to contradict the exper- 

 ence of thousands of his brother bee-keep- 

 ers. " 



While I find little, if anything, in Mr. 

 Dadant's article to which I would take ex- 

 ceptions, and I do think that the assertions 



of Mr. Deacon are too sweeping, I must say 

 that there are two aides to this question of 

 the use of foundation, and upon the oppos- 

 ite side from our Illinois friend comes a 

 writer from California calling himself 

 "Sage Brush" (why can't men sign their 

 own names ? ) who has the following in the 

 American Bee Journal. 

 Comb Foundation— Is its Use Profitable T 



" I was very much interested in the arti- 

 cle on the above subject, on page Til'd, by 

 Mr. S. A. Deacon. Is the use of comb 

 foundation profitable when used in large 

 quanties? I say no. I have been experi- 

 menting on that line, and in giving the re- 

 sults I wish the reader to keep in view the 

 fact that I conducted the experiments in 

 Southern California, in a locality not par- 

 ticularly noted for its honey-yield, but we 

 have the sage and buckwheat on one side, 

 and a large fruit district, in which there 

 are plenty of gum and pepper trees, on the 

 other side of our apiary. Our bees gather 

 honey more or less all the year, thus making 

 it possible to succeed better in such experi- 

 ments than others who were in as good or 

 better honey districts, but without the gums, 

 peppers, and fruit trees to keep up some 

 little flow of honey through the fall, winter 

 and early spring. 



Some years ago I was asked to look over 

 some bees for a neighbor. I found they 

 had been allowed to swarm themselves to 

 death, thus letting the moth get a good 

 start. I fixed up some of them, but a few 

 were so full of moth-worms that the owner 

 asked me to take them, relurniug the hives 

 and frames to him later. When I got them 

 home I found I could not get any comb 

 foundation, so I took a frame of brood for 

 each from the colonies, and putting it in a 

 new hive brushed the little colonies out of 

 the moth-eaten hives into them, giving 

 each from one to two frames, having nar- 

 now starters of fonpdation. They at once 

 commenced to build nice worker-comb. I 

 added empty frames as needed until each 

 had from five to six frames filled with comb 

 and brood. I then took frames from one- 

 half the hives to fill the other half, giving 

 empty frames as before, until in a short 

 time i had the lot ready for the extracting 

 supers. I was so surprised at the result I 

 concluded to try it further. 



The following winter I bought out a email 

 apiary. About the time they commenced to 

 breed up I went throueh them, taking out 

 all the drone-comb from the brood chambers. 

 Running short of worker ccmbs, I took what 

 I needed from the most backward colonies, 

 and filled those that were strong. That left 

 me with a number of colonies of three 

 frames each, fairly well filled with brood. I 

 set these to the side of the hive, put in a 

 board, and in a few days they needed more 

 room. I then gave each an empty frame, 

 and they at once commenced to build nice 

 worker-comb, and filled it with brood as 

 fast as built. I added frames as required 

 until they had about six frames each of 



