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GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Home and home apiary of E. W. Fox, Fruitdale, S. Da. The honey-house is the building shown in the 

 background among the trees. Mr. Fox has a full equipment, including an auto truck, power extractor, etc. 



I had alwaj's supposed that wax is with- 

 out color — clear, transparent. I have seen 

 it many times when a swarm was shaken in 

 front of a hive. Many of these scales are 

 amber-colored, and I am now of the opinion 

 that some of the very yellow cappings on 

 my golden-yellow fall honey is due in part 

 to the yellow wax secreted by the bees, and 

 not entirely to the yellow pollen from the 

 fall flowers. Can you set me straight on 

 this point? The bees sent by this mail are 

 healthy so far as I know. Like the surgeon's 

 patient, " the operation was a success, but 

 the patient died." These bees died from 

 eating too much, but are healthy bees. 



Tola, Kan. 



[Knowing that Mr. Sladen had made a 

 special study of wax secretion, we sent the 

 above letter to him, together with the speci- 

 mens which Mr. Waugh furnished. These 

 he examined and reported on as follows. — 

 Ed.] 



yell0v7 wax scales. 



Lying loose were 48 scales, of which 29 

 were white, 16 pale yellow, 3 bright yellow ; 

 9 scales extracted from bees were all moder- 

 ately bright yellow. The scales consisted as 

 usual of numerous semi-fused laminae of 

 wax. On splitting three of the pale-yellow 

 scales in two it was found that the inner 

 laminae — that is, those that were adjacent to 

 the wax plates when the scale was attached 

 to the abdomen — were white, and that the 

 outer ones were bright yellow. On splitting 

 the bright-yellow scales in two it was found 



that both halves were bright yellow. It is 

 hardly necessary to add that no pollen could 

 be detected in any of the scales. 



It is clear that these bees had been secret- 

 ing bright-yellow wax. Whether they had 

 also been secreting white wax is not so cer- 

 tain, for the white color of some of the 

 scales may have been due to bleaching, but 

 this I think improbable. 



There is no reason to suppose that the 

 bright-yellow color of the wax was due to a 

 distressed condition of the bees. On the 

 other hand, we know that certain honeys are 

 always capped with bright-yellow wax. A 

 well-known instance of this in Europe is the 

 sainfoin {Onobrychus sativa), a plant close- 

 ly allied to the clovers, the honey of which 

 is as light as clover honey. The bright-yel- 

 low color of the comb made from sainfoin 

 honey is generally held to be due to some 

 peculiar property of the honey itself. It is 

 hard to believe that added pollen has any 

 thing to do with it. 



Your correspondent refers to yellow cap- 

 pings produced by a certain kind of fall 

 honey. The production of yellow and white 

 wax scales by his bees might be explained 

 by supposing that the bees produced yellow 

 wax when feeding on this fall honey, and 

 white wax (as we know they will) when 

 feeding on the sugar syrup, which he says 

 he gave them. The restricted movement of 

 the bees during the cold weather Avould 

 make the differentiation possible. 



Ottawa, Out. F. W. L. Sladen. 



