22 



DR. MILLER S 



then in the morning you will not forget to take out the wax 

 before building the fire. 



Then you scrape the dirt from the bottom ui the cake, 

 which you can do more easily while the cake is a little warm. 

 With a large amount of such scrapings it may be worth while to 

 melt the whole to get out the little wax in it, but with a small 

 amount it is not worth the trouble. 



Q. Is beeswax injured by coming to a boil? If so, can it be 

 detected that the wax has been boiled? 



A. Bringing to a boil will hardly hurt it if not repeated too 

 much, nor continued too long, and I don't believe the short boiling 

 could be detected. 



Q. Will a brass or copper vessel injure the quality of the wax? 



A. I think not. Iron will darken it. 



Q. How many pounds of honey does it take to make one 

 pound of wax? 



A. For a long time it was counted 20 pounds. Then some fig- 

 ured it out 7 pounds or less. Possibly 10 or 12 pounds may not be 

 far out of the way. 



Beeswax, Rendering (See Combs, Rendering.) 



Bee Supplies, Ordering. — Q. I have 12 colonies of bees in good 

 movable-frame hives. I am a beginner. What shall I order in 

 the way of supplies? I wish to run for comb honey and increase 

 by natural swarming. I have nothing in the way of tools, and 

 my time is limited, as I am a rural mail carrier. 



A. It is not an easy thing to tell what anyone needs without 

 pretty full particulars as to harvest and conditions. In general 

 terms I should say that you should have on hand enough sections 

 all ready in supers in advance, so that you can give to the bees as 

 many as they would fill in the best season you have ever known, 

 and then an extra one for each colony besides. Possibly you 

 have had so little experience that you don't know what the bees 

 would do in the very best kind of a season. Well, then, we might 

 guess that in the very best kind of a year you would get an aver- 

 age of 125 sections per colony, although that may be putting it 

 pretty low if you are in a good location. If your supers hold 24 

 sections each, as a good many supers do, it would take about five 

 supers to hold the 124 sections, as we don't need to be so exact 

 about it. But some colonies will fill more than the five, and some 

 less ; you can't hold them to the e.xact number, and at the last there 

 will necessarily be more or less unfinished sections on the hives 



