216 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



March 16, 190S. 



as egg-laying is the only work they do. Under the present 

 system of management the queen is often coaxed to lay as 

 many eggs in two years as she usually would in three if in 

 a tree or box-hive ; hence most apiarists think that all queens 

 should be replaced after the second year, with those which 

 have just commenced to lay. However, I do not make this a 

 practice : for I find that, as a rule, the bees will supersede 

 their own queen when she gets to be too old to be of service 

 to them ; so I trust the matter to them, believing they are 

 less liable to mistakes along this line than I am. 



Onondaga Co., N. Y. 



Rendering Old Combs Into Beeswax. 



BY C. P. DADANT. 



Mr. DadanT; — I read in your instructions on rendering combs tliat 

 tliey should be soaked' in a tub of water before rendering. Shall we set 

 them up straight in the tub or lay them flat? They seem to soak water 

 best when set up. — A Reader. 



The old combs, such as are generally taken from very 

 old colonies, contain more than nine-tenths dirt and cocoons. 

 It is therefore of the gjeatest importance to put them, in 

 such condition that the wax will not soak into the residue, 

 since there would be hardly enough of it fairly to moisten the 

 dirt. That is why so many people think that there is no 

 longer any beeswax in old combs. The only method to keep 

 the wax from soaking into the rest when liquefied is by wet- 

 ting, for beeswax will not stick to anything that is wet. So- 

 we instruct the bee-keeper to soak the combs. It matters 

 little iiow they are soaked, but if they are very dry it will not 

 take one long to find out that they are difficult and slow to 

 soak. But if you leave these old combs in the shape given 

 them by the bees, each of those cells, coated as it is with the 

 cast-skin of a larva, will retain its shape and make a nice 

 little nest for some of the liquid wax to sink into. Anyone 

 who has rendered much beeswax and old combs has noticed 

 occasionally a cell full of clear wax, which may be rem.oved 

 only liy a press. 



Now, our method is to break and crush these old combs 

 out of shape, so that the cells inay be closed or flattened. 

 r.i this shape they will sink in water more readily. But there 

 is ? very good way to compel the combs to become soaked, 

 and that is to put the stuff all in a coarse sack and load it 

 down with bricks or stones at the bottom of a tub filled .after- 

 wards with water. You will notice that in a short time the water 

 will begin to take color. When the entire lot is well soaked, 

 it may be melted with hot water. No hard water should 

 be used. 



Here permit me to explain : Hard water contains mineral 

 mvariably, in fact, it would iipt be "hard" unless it did. 

 Some of this mineral will act on the beeswax and damage it. 

 For instance, the least amount of iron in the water will 

 darken the wax. That is why in some localities bee-keepers 

 seem entirely unable to produce nice, bright beeswax. If they 

 were to use rain-water there would be no trouble. 



The man who has a wax-press has no difficulty in get- 

 ting out all the beeswax, or nearly all. But even he who has 

 a press needs some direction for its proper management. 

 It is just as necessary to soak the combs when using the 

 press as when melting the combs and skimming the 

 wax ofif the top of the water, because whatever the residue 

 will soak will be impossible to secure, and much less will 

 soak into the residue if it is already wet, when the wax is 

 melted, as I said before. But those who use the press are all 

 liable to go too fast and use too much power. If the press 

 is filled with well-melted old combs, and kept hot, a turn now 

 and tlien is all that is needed, and one hardly needs to use 

 more power than what may be applied without effort with the 

 hand on the screw. It is just like pressing grapes for the 

 juice — if you try to get it out all at once you simply imprison 

 some of the juice so that it has no means of escape; while 

 if you give it time to slowly leak out, you will get rtiore 

 result with less effort. 



With the man who has no wax-press, although there is 

 more difficulty in rendering the combs, still nearly all the 

 wax may be secured by using plenty of water and skimming 

 the melted wax off the top of the kettle as he goes. If the 

 worst residues are put into a sack with very coarse texture, 

 and this is turned over and over under hot water, nearly all 

 the wax will ooze out. Of course this wax must be ren- 

 dered once more, in order to remove the remaining impuri- 

 ties. 



Rendering combs with the solar extractor will do well 

 for those who have but little residue, and especially for the 



odds and ends 'of the apiary, as they are gathered during 

 the summer. When they are rendered by sun heat, they are 

 out of the way of the moth, while the keeping of these is 

 difficult till they are rendered, especially during the last of 

 the. summer months. 



But the solar extractor is not at all fit to render old 

 combs. The beeswax in them soaks into the cocoons, and 

 nothing is left for the apiarist. 



In rendering beeswax care should be taken not to over- 

 boil it. The mealy residue at the bottom of cakes of bees- 

 wax is nothing more nor less than water-spoiled beeswax — 

 beeswax that has been beaten into a sort of meal by boiling 

 water. Sometimes a bee-keeper will spoil his entire product 

 in this ugly way. A good boil is all that is needed. 



Do not use sulphuric acid in rendering wax. You will 

 be likely to use a half-pint where ten drops would be too much, 

 and it will give your product a sickening and bad smell. 



Hancock Co., 111. 



Curiosities and Myths of Bee- Literature. 



BY ARTHUR C. MILLER. 



Among the curiosities of bee-literature, few strike the 

 student more forcibly than the persistency with which many 

 ancient myths about bees are repeated, often being stated 

 as the results of the writer's own observations or quoted as 

 if of recent discovery. Some are too absurd to receive 

 serious consideration while others seem plausible until sub- 

 jected to a comparison with the actual habits of the bees. 



An accurate interpretation of the actions of the bees is 

 not always possible without a knowledge of the anatomy of 

 the bee, and, again, deductions as to the functions and mode 

 of using various organs are not infrequently wrong, owing 

 to lack of full knowledge of the bees' habits. Also there is 

 often a strange confusing of cause and effect. 



Such things would be of small account to practical bee- 

 keeping were it not that many practices are based on the 

 beliefs, and when the latter are wrong the former are faulty 

 and costly to the bee-keeper. 



The legend about the snail, which, getting into the hive, 

 and the bees being unable to remove it and fearing the con- 

 tamination of decomposing matter, hermetically sealed to 

 the floor with propolis, is as old as bee-keeping. It re- 

 appears with every new bee-book, being cited as an example 

 of the sagacity of the bees. 



The sealing of the snail to the floor was merely the re- 

 sult of the effort of the bees to fill crevices which they could 

 not enter or penetrate with their mandibles. They just as 

 readily and thoroughly fasten a pebble in the same way. 



The ramming of pollen into the cells with tlie bee's head 

 as the rammer, is another myth which dies hard. The work 

 is done with the mandibles, as may readily be seen. The 

 bee's use of her tongue is so greatly misunderstood as almost 

 to warrant the statement that nothing is known about it. 

 How long and how persistently it has been asserted that a 

 worker holding out her tongue toward another bee is offering 

 food, yet the fact of the matter is that the thus extended 

 tongue is always seeking or asking. 



Most instructions for introducing queens cite the "offer- 

 ing of food" as one of the details to be observed. The many 

 and constantly-recurring failures despite the presence of the 

 supposed "peace indicating offering" strangely fail to raise 

 suspicion as to the tenability of the theory. 



CH-\NCING NECT.'^R INTO HONEY. 



Another error most solemnly reasserted from time to 

 time is that bees ripen the honey by creating a high tem- 

 perature, establishing a rapid circulation of air and then 

 pumping the nectar back and forth on the tongues, that it 

 may be exposed as much as possible to this warm draft. 

 It is a very pretty example of the cart before the horse, 

 coupled with an ingenious but erroneous theory as to what 

 converts nectar into honey. 



The heat is caused by the action of the bees in treating 

 the nectar, and the heat together with the moisture compels 

 the bees to create the draft. The belief about bees pumping 

 the nectar up and down the tongue seems too absurd to war- 

 rant consideration were it not so often stated as fact. Some 

 writers have made the theory even more absurd by stating 

 that the bees crook the tongue slightly, that the drop of nec- 

 tar may not be knocked off by contiguous bees. 



A knowledge of the structure of the bee's tongue, to- 

 gether with a little observation of the bees at the ripening 



