1871.] 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



147 



If now. as we must presume was the case, 

 where rational bee culture is practistd, the bce- 

 keei^er weighed his stocks when he prepared 

 them for wintering, he may. with this table in 

 hand, after deducting tare and the approximate 

 weight of bees, be able to judge very nearly how 

 much honey each colony contains at any particu- 

 lar period. He may see from it, after having 

 deprived a colony in May of its more valuable 

 lioney, how much food he must supply from his 

 reserved heather or buckwheat honey, or other 

 adequate substitute. He will also learn from it, 

 much that he has hitherto been unacquainted 

 with ; and I shall be amjily compensated for my 

 labor in preparing it, if I find that it has been 

 serviceable to any who have not had similar 

 opportunities for making observations. 



GORIZZUTI. 



[For the American Beo Journal.] 



Artificial Honey Comb. 



Not a word has been said in the Bee Journal, 

 for some time past, about artificial combs, yet 

 the subject has continued greatly to exercise the 

 minds of thoughtful bee-keepers, and not with- 

 out certain results. Two different kinds of 

 manufactured comb made their appearance dur- 

 ing the past summer. One made of paper satu- 

 rated with wax, of full depth of cells — a beautiful 

 article to look at, and so like real honey comb 

 as to deceive almost any bee-keeper at the first 

 glance, even when taken into his own hands. 

 The bees, however, were not so easily deceived. 

 They saw through the cheat at a glance, and 

 "would have none of it." At least this was 

 true in three cases to my knowledge. In one 

 case they " cut it into sawdust." In another, it 

 was cut down to the foundation, and the cells 

 rebuilt with wax. And in the third case it dis- 

 appeared ill toto from a sj^ace three inches square, 

 where a piece had been fastened in with great 

 care, in a frame of brood comb ; and the bees 

 had began to fill the space with their own w.axen 

 cells. These three cases seem to demonstrate 

 that this kind of artificial comb is not a success. 



The other kind, devised by 3Ir. Quinby, made 

 of metal, with full depth of cells, certainly can- 

 not be cut into sawdust. Whether bees can be 

 wintered in such combs, is an important ques- 

 tion, which can only be determined by experi- 

 ence. I would think the conducting jiower of 

 metal so great as to make it impossible for bees 

 to live in a hive full of such comb. If mistaken 

 in this conjecture so much the better. 



I thought and still think, I have in mind an 

 imaginary machine that will make perfect honey 

 comb from wax ; but it would be expensive to 

 build, and I have no time and but little disposi- 

 tion to attend to it. Besides, I have lately found 

 that it would conflict with a patent issued some 

 years ago to Mr. Wagner, editor of the Journal, 

 for a process for making artificial comb of wax, 

 guttapercha, or various other materials, or metals 

 reduced to a proper degree of thinness. I have 

 read the patent, and find it very broad in its 

 specifications and claims, and covering, it seems 

 to me, pretty nearly the whole business of arti- 



ficial comb making. On a recent visit, Mr. 

 Wagner showed me the plates, dies and press for 

 making his artificial combs, or rather comb 

 foundations, as he used them at the time his 

 patent was issued. That the whole apparatus 

 was in working order was proved by our actually 

 making twenty or thirty sheets of comb founda- 

 tions in a very short time,' although we had to 

 sti>i5 and admii-e the beauty and perfection of 

 almost every sheet as it came from the press. It 

 is just /«?i to make them. Besides it is certain 

 that the bees will use them. Two combs were 

 shown to me, built by bees in a weak nucleus 

 after queen raising was over, at a time when 

 certainly no new comb would have been built 

 without some such inducement. To say that I 

 was delighted, is to put it in a mild form. I am 

 determined to have one of those machines, cost 

 what it may. I had grown to be pretty well 

 satisfied with the combs in my forty-five hives 

 as the bees have built them, with my assistance 

 in trimming and straightening them — no smail 

 task I But I am satisfied no longer. They con- 

 tain to much drone comb, and (I am obliged to 

 confess it J in ^ few of the hives, there ai-e a few 

 frames that I don't trouble much, the combs 

 look so ugly down between the frames. — On one 

 point I am determined. I am going to have 

 straight combs, and worker combs, except perhaps 

 a part of one comb in each hive, and I can do this 

 by using one of Mr. Wagner's machines, and at 

 the same time gratify the natural disposition of 

 the bees to build combs. Mr. Wagner says he is 

 satisfied that a swarm of bees will do better on 

 such comb foundations, than they will in a hive 

 of full combs or combs with full depth cells, for, 

 after swaiming, bees have a strong inclination 

 to produce wax to build comb, even if wax be 

 not a spontaneous or involuntary product of bees 

 at such a time. The experience of several bee- 

 keepers, related at the North-eastern Beekeepers' 

 Convention, held at Utica, New York last Octo- 

 ber, seems to confirm such an oi^inion. There 

 will be other advantages in the use of these 

 combs. They cannot break down by heat, or 

 crack by cold ; nor can they be bi'oken by the 

 honey extractor — three ways in which I have 

 been considerably annoyed. Moreover, Mr. 

 Wagner has devised a very simple and efficient 

 method of fastening these sheets of comb founda- 

 ationsaccurately into frames, so complete that he 

 intends to take out a patent for it. No handling of 

 a comb, no amount of ordinary jolting over even 

 a rough road could possibly detach or break a 

 comb from its frame, when fastened by means 

 of this device ; and the whole arrangement se- 

 cures straight combs beyond a peradventure. It 

 seems to leave nothing to be desired in this di- 

 rection. I think the strength alone of combs 

 built on such foundations, is a sufficient cause, 

 if they had no other good quality, to justify me 

 in gradually destroyi.ig every frame of comb I 

 possess, and replacing it with Mr. Wagner's arti- 

 ficial comb foundations. They are worm-proof, 

 too, as completely as any comb can be ; but this 

 is of small account. Worms never disturb strong 

 swarms. 



The best part of the story remains to be told 

 Mr. Wagner has determined, after this long de- 



