214 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



clines in weight any more in being trans- 

 formed into wax than molasses does in being 

 transformed into candy. Why should it ? 



Yet we shall, without much doubt, stir the 

 same objection in this special that has 

 proven so immovable heretofore. It is easy 

 to scoff and say. Who are these new lights, 

 any way ? 



" These beardless laddies 



Who think they better are informed 



Than their auld (scientific) daddies." 



And the wise men who wrote the American 

 bee books, the serene philosophers who 

 wrote the British bee books, the profound 

 thinkers who wrote the German and French 

 bee books, can all this wisdom be in error 

 and these modern upstarts be right ? In 

 reply we can only say, none of the weighty 

 men afoi-esaid are any more weighty than 

 Aristotle ; and their jumping to conclusions 

 without reasonably reliable experiments is 

 worth just as much as his, and no more. 



Now I am going to do a little of the same 

 kind of jumping. I have some experiments 

 somewhere on the amount of wax yielded 

 by comb honey cut from sections. I don't 

 want to spend the time to hunt them up and 

 so run my memory for the assertion that 

 thirty pounds of section honey yields one 

 pound of wax. If so, this thirty pounds 

 represents an original fifty pounds, in case 

 the ratio I am attacking be true. Or more 

 strictly the bees gathered forty-nine pounds 

 of honey and made twenty pounds of it into 

 one pound of wax, and put the other twenty- 

 nine pounds inside. If their keeper had 

 given them the one pound of wax they 

 would have put the forty-nine of honey 

 within it for a total of fifty pounds. Now 

 here is an apiary that is run for comb honey. 

 The keeper divides it into two equal halves 

 by a mere path run through the middle. 

 To those on one side he gives no wax — and 

 the season is sufficiently poor that they store 

 an average of thirty pounds of surplus honey. 

 To those on the other side he gives an abund- 

 ant supply of wax, and of course they should 

 store an average of fifty pounds. Do they ? 

 There's where the mortal pinch comes in for 

 our venerable F. From year to year, over a 

 continent of practical men experience on 

 this line accumulates. It takes time to make 

 a man feel the inexorable logic of his bal- 

 ance sheet ; but he will feel it eventually. 

 And am I not right in saying that nearly all 

 old bee keepers know there is no such differ- 

 ence as the above ? They may feel sure 



there is difference enough to pay, but as for 

 foundation bringing an increase of forty 

 per cent, they know better. 



I will touch but one other side of the ques- 

 tion, and that is the curious difference of 

 taste between the wax from the virgin comb 

 and the rendered wax from a cake. Does 

 anyone know what makes that curious dif- 

 erence ? The theory which is floating about 

 in my head, in the absence of any very clear 

 proof, is this : All comb except the very 

 choicest is more or less varnished with prop- 

 olis ; and propolis when heated in contact 

 with wax imparts to it some of its own rank 

 flavor. At any rate it seems practically im- 

 possible to have honey as delicate in taste 

 when the wax is supplied as when the bees 

 do the whole job. Not that the difference is 

 very great, or that customers are likely to 

 notice it and complain ; but that the thing 

 counts insensibly against our product. It 

 counts the wrong way in deciding the oft 

 recurring question, shall it be honey, or 

 some other delicacy, that graces the table 

 this time ? 



Richards, Ohio, Dec. 2nd, 1890. 



Contraction, Reversion, Exclusion. — How 

 Much Foundation Helps. — Separa- 

 tors. — Feeding Back. 



C. W. DAYTON. 



fN order to be understood in a descrip- 

 tion of my experience with foundation 

 it is necessary to describe the arrange- 

 ment of the brood chambers. 



The use of foundation will be confined to 

 the production of comb honey. 



In producing comb honey I a.n\ a believer 

 in contraction, reversion and exclusion. 



The last of these we want to obtain combs 

 that are full of honey and the combs in- 

 tended for brood to be full of brood — avoid- 

 ing combs that contain both honey aid 

 brood. Ordinarily this is sought to be ac- 

 com;)lished by taking out two or three 

 combs on each side of the hive and filling 

 the space made vacant with blocks of wood 

 termed " dumrriies." This limits the (jueen 

 to four or five brood combs and then she is 

 confined to the lower story by adjusting a 

 queen excluding honey board between the 

 brood chamber and super. 



This space occupied by "dummies" is 

 worse than wasted, so I devised a plan to 

 use a queen-excluding division board on 

 each side of the queen, and then fill the 

 " dummy " space with sections or extracting 



