438 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



solar extractor, whieli makes a thoro job of 

 removing it. 



A most important point in all wax-melt- 

 ing operations is to iise soft water. I am 

 sure that hard water accounts for the loss 

 of tons of wax in a year. _ 



Speaking of tons reminds me that our 



ton is 2240 lbs. We call the American ton, 

 2000 lbs., "short ton." Your five-gallon can 

 holds 60 lbs. of honey, so the gallon of hon- 

 ey must weigh 12 lbs. Our gallon holds 

 141/4 lbs. of honey — a matter of " locality " 

 again. 



Wainiu, New Zealand. 



RENDERING CAPPINGS INTO MARKETABLE WAX 



BY J. L. BYER. 



Some years ago while buying honey in 

 Ontario a beekeeper, after showing me his 

 crop of 4000 pounds of honey, and stating 

 tlie price he wanted for it, incidentally re- 

 marked that, " in taking off that lot of hon- 

 ey, not a handful of capping-s were remov- 

 ed." That was a " record " all right, and I 

 promptly told him so, adding at the same 

 time some remarks that I fear were hardly 

 comi^limentary to such a method of harvest- 

 ing a crop of clover honey. The honey was 

 very white, but, needless to say, light in 

 body, and lacked that characteristic flavor 

 that is obtained here in Ontario, at least, 

 only by allowing the bees to cure the honey 

 on the hive — a process that calls for the 

 most of the honey to be sealed over before 

 being extracted. 



The man referred to represents the ex- 

 treme view on the part of a very few, 

 fortunately, who produce extracted honey. 

 While he had not a handful of wax from 

 4000 pounds of honey, it is natural to ask 

 how much wax can be 

 secured from a given 

 amount of honey. Of 

 course the answer all de- 

 pends upon certain fac- 

 tors, such as to whether 

 we cut deep or shallow 

 when uncaiiping, and al- 

 so to the proportion of 

 the combs capped over 

 when the honey is ex- 

 tracted. Last year we had 

 a good crop of honey at 

 our north yard ; and ' as 

 we were busy during the 

 honey-flow, and also had 

 a full comi)lement of ex- 

 traeting-supers at that 

 yard, all honey was left 

 on tlie hives till the close 

 of the white-honey flow. 

 There was no buckwheat 

 to make us hasten opera- 

 tions. In York Co. the 

 crop was very light — 

 about 25 pounds to the 

 colony, of white honey. 



and we had a second flow from buckwheat 

 of about the same amount. Of course at 

 the north yard we had a much larger 

 amount of tappings than here at home, as 

 up there the supers were filled, while down 

 here in York Co. very few supers were 

 filled, and the majority of the combs had 

 quite a lot of unsealed honey in when ex- 

 tracting was done. About two-thirds of our 

 crop of 36,000 pounds of honey was pro- 

 duced at the north yard; and as the cap- 

 pings were all melted together here at home, 

 T cannot give the exact proportion from 

 any one yard as compared with another. 

 However, the general average is about the 

 same as for other years ; and after weighing 

 up the wax from the eappings 1 find that 

 we get about one pound of wax to every 

 100 pounds of honey extracted. 



The picture shows the wax just as it 

 came from the press, and that pile repre- 

 sents 365 pounds of very nice wax, altho 

 the cakes were cooled too rapidly, as can 



365 lbs. of wax ohtained from rappings from 36,000 lbs. of honey. 



