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206 



NINTH ANNUAL, REPORT OF THE 



in with old comto and where there are a 

 number of sub-queen cells built on; 

 those will accumulate more wax, so 

 that an old frame generally yields a 

 larger amount of -wax than a new one, 

 especially one that has been used in 

 the brood nest about two years. 



Dr. Phillips — It seems to me that 

 this matter of wax production is a 

 very important subject. It is almost 

 part of our discussion this morning in 

 the matter of foul brood control, be- 

 cause in order to reduce the expense 

 of the disease treatment, we want to 

 get all we can from the material taken 

 away from the bees, and every ounce 

 of wax in a healthy colony de- 

 creases the expense of the treatment 

 just that much. It is, of course, im- 

 portant for the man who has no 

 disease, because he has a great deal of 

 comb to render at various times. 



I have never been satisfied with the 

 wax-press method of wax exti action; 

 it has always seemed to me a slow 

 process. I have nothing much better 

 to offer as far as I myself am con- 

 cerned. In the first place, I dijn c like 

 to put the combs themselves into an 

 ordinary wax- press. In our work we 

 always melt the combs down m a 

 double boiler and let all the wax that 

 will come off first, and then press the 

 slumgum. It makes a great deal 

 shorter operation of it where ii is 

 possible to get a double boiler, which 

 is not very expensive. The other 

 method to which Mr. Brown has re- 

 ferred is a method being developed 

 by some bee-keepers Sn the Hawaiian 

 Islands; they don't use any pressure 

 or press at all, but the slumgum is 

 ground all to pieces, and when it 

 comes out it is almost a powder, and 

 when it is put in the fire it does not 

 crackle. In an operation v/here they 

 took 120 colonies in an apiary an-l 

 rendered the wax from all the sur- 

 plus combs,^some used for brood and 

 some not, they got 4 4-10 pounds of 

 beeswax to every ten fr.ames of Liang- 

 stroth size. 



Dr. Bohrer — I am glad Dr. Phillips 

 made mention of that matter. I have 

 no wax- press, no machine of any 

 kind; do not handle Lees enough to 

 justify me in buying one of those ex- 

 pensive wax-presses, and I don't le- 

 lieve they can get very much wax out 

 of the comb by the time t get through 

 with it. In order to shut the bees off 

 from it, I put It all in a gunnyyack 



and put it down in a dark cave, and 

 then I take about a SO -gallon sugar 

 kettle; I get the water boiling in it, 

 and dump the sack in it, and in half 

 a minute it is melted down. I boil 

 that probably for an hour befor.3 I be- 

 gin to skim off any. Then I skim it 

 off the top with a dippe", and then 

 pour it into something ike a large 

 dishpan, and keep boiling and fekim- 

 ming. I did this in one ease, and rhe 

 water began to look pretty muddy for 

 a while, and I took the sack out and 

 then put on another kettle and heated 

 that up and boiled the same sack 

 over again, an<i kept skimming as 

 long as I could get anything in the 

 shape of wax off, and poured it into a 

 basin of water. Then I melted it 

 again and poured it off into a cooler, 

 and then I turned in and built a fire 

 in the kettle and burned it out, be- 

 cause the wax may get up around the 

 top, and it may be you have not de- 

 stroyed all the germs. I didn't get 

 just the whitest kind of wax, and I 

 thought of what was made mention of 

 by Mr. Dadant, and that is, not melt- 

 ing the wax or rendering it out in 

 one of those solar extractor.?. 1 did 

 not want to use one of them, because 

 I was afraid of that, where there i.? 

 any foul brood about. After you have 

 boiled that way, I don't believe you 

 would get four ounces out of it. After 

 it had lain there a wh'le, I built a fire 

 there, and it burned up and it didn't 

 seem to indicate there was any gela- 

 tinous substance in it. 



Mr. Brown. — ^I would like to make 

 some comment about thai, plan cf 

 churning the wax. Whan I fixed my 

 melting apparatus first, I thought I 

 had it so that I was going to put it 

 in the frames and boil it u.p, and fix it 

 so as to churn it up an 1 down and 

 get the wax out of it there, but it 

 wouldn't work for me; I didn't get 

 over a pound and a naif to a ten- 

 irarne hive of that wax, and mostly 

 all the slumgum had gotten to a point 

 where it had settled. The weight of 

 the slumgum was heavier than the 

 wax, and it would settle in the bottom 

 of th3 tank. I wasn't satisfied, and I 

 ran the slumgum into my press and, 

 while it looked as though there was 

 nothing else in it, I pres-^ed It out, and 

 I goit more wax than 1 skimmed out 

 before. 



Mr. Hall — Mr. President, i thought 

 I hadn't anything to say, but after Dr. 





