THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



176 



der Mr. Abbott's able management, is, 

 however, doing a good work, and we must 

 look out or our English friends may yet 

 lead us in both respects. 



QuEENLEss Stocks. — The British Bee 

 Journal advises to wait " until drones ap- 

 pear, and then make the respective occu- 

 pants of a queenlcss and a full stock, 

 change their tenancies. Each set of bees 

 must be kept on its own stand, and the 

 hive of each given to the other ; the arti- 

 ficial swarm will then quickly fill the 

 broodless combs of the queenless bees, 

 while the latter will act as heat-producers 

 in the others' brood-combs, and prevent 

 the possibility of loss through sparseness 

 of bees, a casualty too common when 

 driven stocks have been removed from 

 their original stands. The young bees, 

 which will hatch by hundreds daily, from 

 the combs of the driven bees, will speed- 

 ily raise queen cells therein; or. if possi- 

 ble, a queen, or queen-cell, may be given 

 to them, but in either case, we think the 

 bees of the queenless stock will have been 

 put to the best possible use." 



Comb Foundation. 



We obtained some comb foundation and 

 have it on trial at our own apiary. The 

 bees take to it readily, and the only ques- 

 tion about using it in the body of the hive 

 is the expense. As we have before stated, 

 it will depend on the circumstances of 

 each individual case as to what price it 

 will be profitable to pay for it. Perriue 

 has made no changes from his prices first 

 advertised— $1.20 to $1.00 per pound for 

 five to one hundred pounds, according to 

 quantity — although he thinks he will 

 make improvements in rapidity of manu- 

 facture, and reduce five to ten cents per 

 pound. This for pure beeswax. 



King & Slocum say they can furnish 

 the pure beeswax foundation at about 

 $1.25, charges paid, and when mixed with 

 other materials at f 1.00. 



We don't know Novice's price for pure 

 beeswax, and are a little mixed about his 

 prices for the " mixed " article. We think 

 it is 75 cents for the yellow, and he hoped 

 to be able to furnish the white at 75 cents. 

 His white foundations are two parts white 

 wax and one part paraflBne. Yellow, one 

 part yellow wax and three parts parafline. 

 From experiments made, he thinks pure 

 wax would not answer the purpose at all. 

 On the other hand, Perrine says he has 

 not yet been able to make paraffine work. 



We are a little surprised at the price of 



King & Slocum. As they state that each 

 one should be able to make his own 

 foundation at a cost not to exceed 40 cents 

 per pound, why should they not be able 

 to sell it at less than $1.00 per pound? 



We got some white foundation of Nov- 

 ice. It appeared rather brittle, but thia 

 was partly, perhaps altogether, owing to 

 the way in whicli it was packed, being 

 rolled up in newspapers and sent by mail. 

 It was much broken. We are not sure but 

 we will have to give up some of our preju- 

 dices against paraffine if one-third of the 

 material in this was paraffine. We chewed 

 a piece of it for two or three hours and 

 could not discover any taste whatever, so 

 perhaps it is just as good as pure beeswax. 

 We do not forget the disclaimer of one 

 correspondent, that beeswax is not honey- 

 comb, and are ready to approve or con- 

 demn the use of foundation for surplus ac- 

 cording as the evidence may decide. We 

 still think that if it cannot be used for 

 surplus it will not be nearly so important 

 an acquisition. We should have said in 

 the proper place that we tried chewing 

 some white foundation of Long's that had 

 a decidedly unpleasant, bitter taste, and 

 another specimen that had a greasy taste, 

 and lost entirely its tenacity on being 

 chewed. 



We obtained some yellow foundation 

 from Perrine which seems to work well 

 for the body of the hive. One frame of it 

 had eggs in the cells within about twenty- 

 four hours after being placed in the hive. 

 But all the combs except one were taken 

 away from the colony. One frame had in 

 it a'depth of about three inches of founda- 

 tion, and the bees built the next three 

 inches of the same yellow color. Did 

 they carry down some of the wax from 

 above? The height of our ambition had 

 been to fill a frame entirely full of founda- 

 tion, fastening it on all four sides so that 

 there could be no question about our hav- 

 ing the frame full of worker comb and 

 perfectly straight. On trying it we found 

 it was a failure so far as being straight, 

 for after the bees got to work at it, it 

 bagged to one side. We think the best 

 way is to leave a space of about a quarter 

 of an inch at the bottom and at the two 

 sides. In fastening into the frame we 

 succeeded best with a mixture of beeswax 



