62 DR. miller's 



advise that combs be renewed every four or five ycirs, but I 

 think the idea is based only upon theory. Without any careful 

 examination one might easily conclude that as something more 

 than vj'as there before is left in the cell, every time a young bee is 

 reared in it, the cell must necessarily become smaller. But ex- 

 amine carefully and you'll find that the diameter of the cell at its 

 mouth remains the same. You will probably find that the bees 

 gnaw out some of the cocoon at the sides, leaving it at the bot- 

 tom. That, of course, will make the cell shallower, but to make 

 up for that, the bees add fresh wax to the cell-wall at the mouth 

 of the cell. If they add to the cell-wall at the mouth, that ought 

 to increase the thickness of the comb, oughtn't it? Well, that's 

 exactly what it does. Measure the thickness of a piece of worker- 

 comb from which the first batch of brood has just emerged, and 

 you will find it measures seven-eighths of an inch. Take one old 

 enough, and it will be fully an inch thick, and you will find the 

 septum one-eighth of an inch thick. The only practical danger 

 is that if the combs get to be old enough the spacing from center 

 to center may become too small; in other words, the space be- 

 tween two combs becomes smaller. Don't worry about good, 

 straight combs being hurt with age. 



Combs, Rendering into Wax. — Q. I have a lot of combs from 

 hives in which the bees winter-killed; also from late swarms last 

 year that starved out during the long, cold winter. How can I 

 convert these combs into beeswax? 



A. If you have enough to make it worth while, the best way to 

 get the wax out of \'Our combs is to get one of the wax-presses or 

 extractors that will leave in the remains a very small amount of 

 wax. For a very few combs, however, it may not pay to spend 

 much, and the solar extractor will do. You may also get out a 

 large per cent with a dripping-pan. Take an old dripping-pan 

 {of course, a new one would answer), split it open at one cor- 

 ner, put it in the oven of a cook-stove, with the split end pro- 

 jecting out of the oven so that a vessel set under it will catch the 

 dripping wax. Put a pebble or something else under the inside 

 corner, so as to make the wa.x flow outward. If the comb be pre- 

 viously soaked with water several days, and a single comb at a 

 time be laid in the pan, the wax will not be tempted to hide in 

 the cups made b}' the cocoons. But it will be slow work. You 

 may also break the combs up into bits, provided you can have 

 them cold enough to be brittle, put them in a gunny sack in a 



