MANUAL or THE APIARY. 203 



CHAPTEK XIV. 



COMB FOUNDATION. 



Every apiarist of experience knows that empty combs ia 

 frames, comb-guides in the sections, to tempt the bees and to 

 insure the proper position of the full combs, in fact, combs of 

 almost any kind or shape, are of great importance. So every 

 skillful apiarist is very careful to save all drone-comb that is 

 cut out of the brood-chamber — where it is worse than useless, 

 as it brings with it m3rriads of those useless gormands, the 

 drones — to kill the eggs, remove the brood, or extract the 

 honey, and to transfer it to the sections. He is equally care- 

 ful to keep all his worker-comb, so long as the cells are of 

 proper size to domicile full-sized larvae, and never to sell any 

 comb, or even comb-honey, unless a much greater price makes 

 it desirable. 



No wonder, then, if comb is so desirable, that German 

 thought and Yankee ingenuity have devised means of giving 

 the bees at least a start in this important, yet expensive work 



Fig. 65. 



^-c^i'--:?^^s-=^- 



'-V^'-i^'^^'-^^tS' 



of comb-building, and hence the origin of another great aid 

 to the apiarist — comb foundation (Fig. 65). 



HISTORY. 



For more than twenty years the Germans have used im- 

 pressed sheets of wax as a foundation for comb, as it was first 

 made by Herr Mehring, in 1857. These sheets are four or five 

 times as thick as the partition at the centre of natural comb, 



