"x^o9^ \ 



Vol. XIV. 



AUGUST 15, 1880. 



No. 10. 



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THE WAX QUESTION. 



HOW MANY POUNDS OK HONEY DOES A POUND OF 

 WAX ACTUAI.I.Y COST US? 



fHE beautiful agreement of authorities, that it 

 requires tweiit.y pounds of lioiie.v to make 

 one pound of wax, is not, I believe, owinja: to 

 a coneurrcncc of experiments. The exper- 

 iments often indicate much more than that 

 — 1(W to 1 sometimes. The authorities concur that 

 30 to 1 is about all we can be got to believe, and so 

 state it at that. The fact seems to l)c, that no exjier- 

 imentof this kind is worth a r.ve straw unless the 

 bees have their entire liberty, and are at work on 

 natural supplies in a perfectly natural way. It 

 is difficult to grant them this much, and at the 

 same time weigh things as accurately as exact 

 science relishes; but there is no help for it. Trutli- 

 ful approximations are better than exact figures 

 that begin and end in utter falsehood. 



That- tlic jircvalent doctrine is an utter false- 

 hood, might be readil.v inferred from the wa.v bees 

 treat wax after the.y get it secreted. Much of it is 

 at times drojjpcd to tlie bottom of the hive, and 

 blown out as worthless litter. The scales in which 

 it is formed seem quickly to get a little dry and 

 stiEf, and they prefer to secrete fresh ones. Now, 

 the bee is, l)y nature, a miser— and 20 to 1 is some- 

 where near tJic present ratio of silver to gold. 

 When you can find a miser who will i)inch tlie sil- 

 ver coins till thcj" squeak, and at the sanu^ time 

 throw the gold coins on the floor, and sweep them 

 out into the street, then you may look for a bee 

 that will be e(iually wasteful of his resources. 

 True, the bee can not reason about the matter; but 

 the development? of uiUuro, and tho iiUiinnti; con- 



clusions of reason are usually in accord. That is, 

 nature has already reached the point where rea- 

 son, after floundering about, and making all the 

 mistakes possible, will finally come to rest. We 

 can dJBduco the same thing again by this little sim- 

 ple experiment: Expose a section of nice comb- 

 honey. The bees, if not otherwise engaged, will 

 carry the honey away with an eagerness that 

 amounts almost to frenzy. But how about the 

 delicate comb, worth twenty times as much as the 

 hone3', weight for weight ? The bees are perfect- 

 ly capable of carrying home the comb, and have 

 been known to do so as an occasional eccentricity; 

 but ordinaril.v they can not be nuxdc to take it. 



Now for the experiment which you requested me 

 to write ui): July 4th, 1885, a good but rather 

 small prime swarm of bees was hived on a delicate 

 scale which will weigh ounces, in order that their 

 income and wax product might be estimated as 

 closel.v as ])ossible. 1'he swarm weighed .just three 

 ounces less than four pounds, and was lii\('d about 

 sundown. During the night the.y decreased iu 

 weight two ounces. The average decrease in 

 weight at night during the experiment was about 

 twice this, or four ounces i)er night. 



The plan of the exiioriment was to let them work 

 undisturbed four days (as long as they could with- 

 out eggs hatching), luid then to cut out the pro- 

 ducts of their labor, weigh the amount cut out, 

 render the wax, and weigh that. From these data 

 a ratio can be ai)pro.\imated. Al'tefthis the.y were 

 t« bo uuilisturbcd four days i7iore, and then be 

 lleeeed again. Then a third trial of the same jieriod 

 was to be i)ut upon them, alter which the experi- 

 ment was to be closed. The colony was wcifarbetj 

 every luoriiiiig sjnd uigllt- 



