S BEES-WAX AND ITS ECONOMICAL USES. 



Otto Schulz writes {History of Artificial Comb) that 

 these methods succeeded in inducing bees to build 

 straight by constant time-wasting manipulations, yet all 

 one's hopes were not realised, and the vexation was 

 especially great when the bee-keeper in the early spring- 

 put in a frame provided with the impressions, and at 

 the beginning of the construction perceived that princi- 

 pally drone-cells were being built. 



The carpenter, Mehring, of Frankenthal in the, 

 Palatinate, was the first to conceive the idea of con- 

 structing a pair of plates of wood on which were 

 ongraved the impressions of the bases of the cells, with 

 which he pressed out of wax-sheets the first foundations 

 of the comb. Diimmler in Homburg, Kunz in Jagendorf , 

 Sand in Gundau, Peter Jacob in Fraubrunnen in Switzer- 

 land, perfected the ingenious discovery, and soon furnished 

 very useful foundations. But it was Otto Schulz, of 

 Buckow, who, later on, brought the artificial combs to a 

 perfection hitherto unattained.* Since then he ha^ 

 never been unfaithful to his principles, viz. : to furnish 

 a perfect product at a low pi-ice and in large quantities. 

 That this undertaking has grown in the hands of the 

 ' Bee-lord ' (literally the bee-village-magistrate), as our 

 manufacturer is called in the bee-world, is to be seen by 

 the fact that his business increases every year, and that, 

 in 1885, he produced and despatched about 18,000 kilo- 

 grammes (a kilogramme = 2i lbs.).t Competition was 

 not wanting. Comb foundation manufactories have shot 

 up like mushrooms from the ground in the two last de- 



* Some of the best machines have been made in America, and 

 Mr. Root was one of the first in that country to popularise the 

 use of foundation, and to construct a practical machine for its 

 production. Amongst the most popular machines the best are, 

 the Vandervoort, Dunham, and Root, but none of these excel 

 those made in England by A. Godman. T. W. C. 



f These figures have been considerably exceeded by Messrs. 

 Dadant & Son, who in 1887 produced and sold 57,831 Ihs. of 

 comb foundation, notwithstanding that the season was a bad one 

 in America. T. W. C. 



