284 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



light. Dr. Miller's idea, if I uiulerstand 

 him, is something like this: In order to 

 get honey we mu.st have bees. The more 

 bees the more honey. If the queen has 

 filled all the available cells in eight 

 frames, give her more in an additional 

 story; then you will get more bees, and, 

 consequently, more honey. I think this 

 is correct reasoning. I agree with it. 

 But, doctor, let's go a little farther. A 

 queen that has eight combs well filled 

 with brood just at the approach of the 

 honey harvest, will not fill eight more 

 so full as another queen would have filled 

 them if she had had them early in the 

 spring. To put it in a different shape, 

 if a man is going to put his capital into 

 an extra hive and set of combs for each 

 of his colonies, he will get more bees, 

 and, consequently, more honey, if he has 

 a queen for each of these new hives; in 

 short, if he has then occupied by regular 

 colonies. The profitable keeping of bees 

 does not depend so nmch upon having 

 each qtieen occupied to her full capacity, 

 as it does in having the combs and hives 

 occupied to their full capacity. 



THE SOLAR WAX EXTRACTOR. 



How it may Also be Used for Purifying the 

 Wax. 



In a recent is.sue of the American Bee 

 Journal, Mr. C. P. Dadant had an article 

 on the rendering of wax, and in that arti- 

 cle he condemned the solar extractor as 

 valueless for purifying wax. , In the same 

 journal for July 21st, Mr. O. O. Popple- 

 ton has an article in which he shows how 

 the solar extractor may be so arranged as 

 to furnish wax of the highest purity. 

 Here is what he says. 



On page 338 Mr. C. P. Dadant writes 

 quite an article under the above caption, 

 at the close of which he suggests that it 

 might be well to give the subject a thor- 

 ough examination. 



My experience with purifying beeswax 

 in the sun extractor has been exactly op- 

 posite to what Mr. Dadant's seems to have 

 been. When I first read his article I was 



almost lost in amazement to understand 

 how it were possible for two such experi- 

 enced men as we are, to have had such 

 directly different experience. A careful 

 re-reading of what he wrote explains it, 

 I think, and if I have misunderstood him 

 he can set me right. 



The details of our extractors, as well as 

 our methods of using them, must be quite 

 different, he only getting from his the 

 one result of melting the comb, while I 

 get both melting and the best results in 

 purifying the wax of any method I have 

 ever tried. It seems that Mr. Dadant 

 allows the wax, as it drips from the comb- 

 pan in his extractor, to cool and harden 

 as it drips. This works exactly as he ex- 

 plains in his second paragraph, and more 

 or less dregs and dirt come off and are 

 mixed all through the wax, and remelt- 

 ing in the extractor is only doing over 

 again the same process with the same 

 results. 



Mr. Dadant has fully explained in the 

 next paragraph the method and principle 

 of purifying wax by allowing it to remain 

 for several hours at a temperature between 

 its melting and boiling points, giving a 

 chance for all impurities to settle to the 

 bottom. This is exactly what can be 

 done in the sun extractor just as easy as 

 not to do it, and I had no idea that any 

 one was using an extractor any other way. 

 All one has to do to secure this in an ex- 

 tractor is to have it made enough larger 

 to allow the dish which receives the 

 melted wax from the comb-pan to be in 

 the sun under glass, which keeps it in a 

 melted condition for hours. 



The extractors I use are of a size to 

 take glasses 30 x 40 inches in size. The 

 comb-pans are made from 20 x 28 inch 

 sheets of tin, thus allowing ample room 

 inside of the extractor for both c6mb and 

 melted wax pans to remain in the sun. 



When the melted wax is in the right 

 condition, that is, just before the sun 

 sinks low enough so the wax commences 

 to cool, I dip off the wax into molds, 

 using oblong square-cornered bread-pans 

 for molds, and a small flat-sided dipper. 

 PvUipty square cans, such as those used 

 for cocoa or corned beef, one-pound size, 

 are good. With care, nearly all the wax 

 can be dipped off in an absolutely pure 

 condition, leaving all the dirt and a thin 

 layer of wax. These la.st thin cakes of 

 wax, with such dirt as adheres to them, 

 are allowed to accumulate until there is 

 enough to make a charge for the extrac- 

 tor, when they are re-melted and treated 

 the same as were the original combs. 



Of course, if one doesn't wish to take 

 the trouble of dipping off the wax into 



