HOW TO KEEP BEES FOR PROFIT 



Looking down into the home of the bees, 

 we find a number of frames of comb running 

 from front to back of the hive and covered by 

 clustering bees. These combs constitute the 

 furniture of the bees, for in the cells of the 

 combs they rear their young and store their 

 honey. The bees usually begin at the tops 

 of their frames and build their combs down- 

 ward until every frame is nicely filled. 



These combs are made of wax, which the 

 bees manufacture from the honey with which 

 they have filled their stomachs. Hanging 

 in clusters, they produce small pentagonal 

 disks of wax from the little wax scales or 

 pouches on the under side of the abdomen of 

 the worker bee. The work of wax-building, 

 like that of feeding the eggs, is done mostly 

 by the young bees, as the older bees seem to 

 have lost the wax-producing power with old 

 age. It usually takes the bees about twenty- 

 four hours to produce wax after having gorged 

 themselves with honey, and they will consume 

 from nine to ten pounds of honey to produce 



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