4 BEES-WAX AND ITS ECONOMICAL USES. 



By the introduction of sugar bee-keeping- was decreased 

 still more, and the production of wax was reduced to a 

 minimum. As powerful competitors of wax, there 

 appeared in commerce wax obtained from various plants 

 and minerals, such as stearine, paraffine, ceresine, and 

 others, which still further lowered the price of bees- wax. 



Germany/ has always produced a very much-prized 

 wax for technical, medicinal, and artistic uses ; so have 

 also the various Austrian provinces and Switzerland. 

 Turkey is said to produce the best of all known de- 

 scriptions of wax. Turkish wax is also the dearest ; 

 usually of a bright orange colour. France produces a large 

 quantity of splendid wax. Closely following the French 

 comes the Spanish, in cakes of from 2 to 3 Ibs. in weight. 

 Italy also produces large quantities of excellent wax. Of 

 the various kinds of wax other than European , the West 

 Indian, Egyptian, and Barbary wax are highly prized. 



THE PRODUCTION OF WAX. 



Bee-keepers, and amongst them Swammerclam, Ma- 

 raldi, Reaumur, and others, were for a long time of 

 opinion that bees collected wax directly from flower?. 

 (Swammerdam : Biblia Natures ; Maraldi : Observations 

 sur les Abeilles ; Memoir es de VAcad. des Sciences, 1712 ; 

 Keaumur: Histoire Nat. des Abeilles). But the experi- 

 ments of Hunter have shown that the bee by no means 

 plays so simple a part in the production of wax, for this 

 great anatomist, so long ago as the year 1702, gave a 

 description of the segments of the bee's abdomen, by 

 which the wax is separated into small scales (Philostph. 

 Trans., 1712>, an observation which Huber of Geneva 

 confirms in his Nouvelles Observations sur les Abeilles, 

 II., chap. 1. Already in 1G84 Martin John had made 

 the same observation.* 



* It is difficult to say who first discovered the scales of wax, 

 but they were noticed and described by Herman C. Hornbostel, 

 a Hanoverian pastor, in the Hamburg Library about 1745. A 

 German farmer, a member of the Lusatian bee society, also 

 noticed them in 1765, and this fact was communicated to Bonnet 

 by Willeim. In 1774 Tlicrley mentioned them, and so did 

 Wildmau in 1779. T. W. C 



