84 MANUAL OF APICULTURE. 





The supers should be promptly removed at the close of the honey 

 harvest, honey boards with bee escapes in them being used to free 

 them from bees, as described under the head of ''Extracting." If the 

 gathering season for the year has also ended, an examination of the 

 brood apartment should be made to determine whether feeding is neces- 

 sary, either to prolong brood rearing or for winter stores. 



PRODUCTION OF WAX. 



The progressive apiarist of the present time does not look upon the 

 production of wax in so great a proportion compared with his honey 

 yield as did the old-time box-hive bee keeper. The latter obtained much 

 of his honey for the market by crushing the combs and straining it out, 

 leaving the crushed combs to be melted up for their wax. Before the 

 use of supers late swarms and many colonies quite heavy in honey were 

 smothered by the use of sulphur; the light ones because their honey 

 supply would not bring them through the winter, and the very heavy 

 ones because of the rich yield in honey. Frequent losses of bees in 

 wintering and through queeulessness gave more combs for melting, as 

 without frame hives, honey extractors, or comb-foundation machines, 

 the vacated combs were not often utilized again. The wax from the 

 pressed combs was all marketed, since there could be but little home 

 use for it. 



The bee keeper of to-day, after having removed the honey from the 

 combs by centrifugal force, returns them, but slightly injured, to be 

 refilled by the bees, and at the end of the season these combs are stored 

 away for use in successive years, or he secures the surplus, also apart 

 from the brood, in neat sectional boxes, to be marketed as stored that 

 is, without cutting. 



The wax must therefore come from the cappiugs of combs where 

 extracted honey is produced, from occasional broken comb, bits of drone 

 comb that are cut out to be replaced by worker comb, from unfinished 

 and travel-stained sections from which the honey has been extracted, 

 or from old brood combs that need to be replaced. Since the price per 

 pound of extracted honey is usually not less than one-third and that 

 of comb honey one-half the price of wax, and it has already been indi- 

 cated (p. 28) that some 1.2 to 15 pounds of honey may in general be 

 safely reckoned as necessary to produce 1 pound of comb, it can readily 

 be seen that it is much more profitable to turn the working force, in so 

 far as possible, to the production of honey rather than wax, taking only 

 as much wax as can be produced without lowering the yield of honey; 

 and what wax is taken is practically turned into honey the following 

 year, for it is made into comb foundation, which, judiciously used, 

 increases in turn the season's yield of honey. 



Wax being so much more valuable than honey, it behooves the bee 

 keeper to save even the smallest pieces of comb ; but during warm 

 weather they must not be left long or they will serve as breeding places 



