AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



703 



Cheap Honey in California. 



If there is any cheap honey offered on 

 this coast this year it ought to be in- 

 spected to see if it has not been adul- 

 terated. There is but little honey on 

 hand, either of extracted or comb. There 

 are parties in San Francisco who boast 

 that the honey crop is not short this 

 year, and that they have handled 12 

 carloads themselves this season. To 

 them this may seem a large crop of 

 honey, but it proves nothing, for in an 

 extra good year two apiaries in this 

 Southern California could fill such an 

 order and then have some stock on hand. 

 The truth is there has not been a full 

 yield anywhere in this locality, while in 

 many sections there has not been a 

 pound of honey produced, and in others 

 the bees have been fed to keep them 

 from starving. Cheap honey on this 

 coast means adulterated honey, and our 

 statutes ought to be enforced to prevent 

 its sale and punish the adulterator. — C. 

 N. Wilson, in Rural Califomian. 



Extracting Beeswax. 



I will give my way of making wax, 

 though it may not be the best way, but 

 it does very well for the small amount I 

 have. I never melt good comb, unless 

 the moths get ahead of me and compel 

 it. It is usually scrapings from the bot- 

 tom of boxes, hives and break-joint 

 honey-boards, which seem to be of no 

 value at all, but if properly treated it 

 will produce nice, light-colored wax. 



Put the material from which the wax 

 s to be made into a metal sieve, and 

 place this over a pan of water, and then 

 set in a moderately warm oven. It 

 needs to be watched very carefully, or it 

 will run over. I have often resolved 

 never to melt wax on the kitchen-stove 

 while busy with other cares, for if I do, 

 I am sure to be sorry for it. It will be 

 forgotten, and only called to remem- 

 brance by a stream of yellow wax run- 

 ning from the oven. 1 have a honey- 



house with a cook-stove in it, and when 

 1 go out there to work, my mind is upon 

 honey and wax, and I seldom forget it. 

 I have several pans of the same size, 

 and after nearly all of the wax has run 

 through the sieve, I change it to another 

 pan, in this way making sure that it will 

 be saved. 



If boiling water is used when first put 

 in, it is apt to run over before the wax is 

 melted ; therefore it is better to start 

 with cold water. After the wax has 

 cooled in the pans, I remove it and 

 scrape out the pollen and propolis, so as 

 to be ready to place the sieve over it 

 again. This debris I often scrape into a 

 paper, to use in kindling a fire. These 

 cakes of wax I remelt in a pan placed 

 over a kettle of boiling water. Melt out 

 the ends of a fruit-can and tie cheese- 

 cloth over it, and set it in a basin, pour 

 the melted wax through it ; stop if there 

 are any dregs. I keep a half dozen 

 quart basins, so as to have the cakes all 

 of one size, and when a melted basin of 

 wax has settled, before it begins to con- 

 geal, pour it into another, leaving the 

 dregs. 



As we produce comb honey almost ex- 

 clusively, there is little but the scrapings 

 to melt, and tne yield is only 10 or 12 

 pounds yearly. I have succeeded better 

 in this way, and the product has been 

 more satisfactory than when I put the 

 contents into a bag and boiled it in a 

 kettle of water with stones on top to 

 keep it down. — Mks. L. Haerison, in 

 Orange Judd Farmer. 



Corn-Cobs as an Absorbent. 



After experimenting with various sub- 

 stances, the well-known absorbent 

 power of corn-cobs induced me to try 

 them, using them whole, and filling the 

 interstices with dry, fine sawdust, 

 which answered very well. Afterward I 

 had them ground at a feed-mill, and 

 filled the boxes three inches with this 

 meal and I want nothing else. Cobs 

 chopped and mixed with dry sawdust do 

 well. This is practically a non-conduc- 

 tor of heat, and it is dense and porous, 

 and has the capillary force — like blot- 

 ting-paper — to carry moisture to the 

 outer atmosphere. To illustrate the 

 capillary force, suppose we build a new 

 hive from lumber sawed transversely 

 four inches thick — sides, ends and cover 

 joints hermetically sealed. This would 

 certainly be a warm hive, and, with the 

 capillaries or pores of the lumber di- 

 rected from within outward, you would 

 never find a drop of water condensed on 



