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208 



NINTH ANNUAL. REPORT OF THE 



under hot water. In that way it is 

 not a difficult matter f(jr one person 

 to run, say, a thousand to fifteen hun- 

 dred combs through in a day, having 

 some receptacles that you can cool 

 the wax in. I see someone has 

 brought here and left -at the desk 

 some samples of wax. There is a 

 difference in the shade of those two 

 samples, and the more iron there is, 

 the darker the shade. Don't leave the 

 wax in iron longer than you are 

 obliged to, and by all means let it cool 

 in wood, tin or copper. My prefer- 

 ence would be bright tin, and 

 wherever it cools, that receptacle 

 should have considerable hot water 

 below the wax, and the entire cnn, or 

 whatever it is that the wa-i cools in, 

 should be enclosed so as to be -i long 

 time cooling. 



A few years ago, when I was up in 

 Mr. Dadant's foundation factory, in 

 their melting building, the wax that 

 was melted was run into deep, long 

 cans perhaps half full of boiling wa- 

 ter; those were run into a little cup- 

 board and enclosed; in the inside 

 there was liquid wax in abundance, 

 yet in that can it would take from 24 

 to 36 hours before that "'ax would be 

 into the form of a cake and the for- 

 eign material had settled nut of it. 

 As far as acid is concerned to purif> 

 the wax, we, as bee-keepers, had bel- 

 ter let that part alone, for the ma- 

 jority of us are not equipped. For 

 comb foundation, men of experience 

 have learned how much to use, and 

 can use a little of it in the final melt- 

 ing. 



Mr. Brown — One of those samples 

 of wax, bright yellow, is from cap- 

 pings that have never been in water, 

 but the cappings were melted; and 

 the other one is from scrapings that 

 w^ere over half or two-thirds propolis. 

 The lighter colored one is from pro- 

 polis, and if you notice in the smell, 

 you will notice there is a large smell 

 of propolis on that one cake. I no- 

 ticed here a short time ago a state- 

 ment that where propolis was mixed 

 with wax it would not work for polish- 

 ing purposes, and, also, if you broke a 

 cake of wax from cappings or clear 

 combs you could put your finger on It 

 and rub it around, and it would shine. 

 Take a cake where there is propolis, 

 and you can't do it. 



Mr. Morgan — I would like to ask 

 Dr. Phillips, or anyone who knows, if 



wax made in the solar extractor is 

 superior in any way to water render- 

 ed wax? I have heard it was, and 

 that it was worth from five to ten 

 cents a pound more than the water 

 rendered wax. 



Dr. Bohrer — It is if it is purified. 

 That is, white wax is used for mak- 

 ing ointments. They refine it. You 

 can take a solar extractor and run it 

 through that as many times as you 

 like, and get a piece of galvanized 

 iron and get your tinner to turn the 

 edges up at the bottom, and run it to 

 a point, and set a basin under that 

 with water in it, and put a pane of 

 glass over that, and put your wax in 

 it, and put it out in the hot sun, and 

 the oftener you run it through, the 

 whiter it will get. 



Dr. Phillips — The rendering of the 

 white wax of commerce is not done 

 under glass. The way the wax manu- 

 facturers take care of that is to cut it 

 up into very fine shavings, and put it 

 out in the sun on trays and leave it 

 till it is perfectly white. I do not 

 think that wax from the solar wax 

 extractor will bring a very much big- 

 ger price than the others in the mar- 

 ket, because the men who have to buy 

 the wax have to take care of it and 

 fix it up for their own use; and in 

 making it up for floor polish or medici- 

 nal purposes, or candles, it all has to 

 be re-treated anyway. 



Mr. DeJong — I spoke to iMr. Dadant 

 about thiat point yesterday, and he 

 said that was all nothing, it is all the 

 same; he said that there was no 

 difference. This is what Mr. Mor- 

 gan speaks of. A man from the 

 Black Hills said that he melted his 

 comb right in the kettles dry, and his 

 wax was worth seven to eight cents a 

 pound more than the other wax melted 

 in hot water. 



Mr. Poppleton — ^In one way the wax 

 of the solar wax extractor is better 

 than other wax; in the solar wax ex- 

 tractor it remains from two to three 

 hours settling there, and that will al- 

 ways clarify it better than in any 

 other way. Mr. Dadant has advanced 

 the idea of slow melting helping the 

 wax. It is not in the slow melting', it 

 is in keeping it melted a long time. 

 In the solar wax extractor it is kept 

 so. and the wax from that, if it can be 

 properly handled, is almost always 

 clear from other material. I presume 

 I have used the solar wax extractor 





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