226 



Comb Foundation. 



CHAPTEE XV. 

 COMB FOUNDATION. 



Every apiarist of experience knows that empty combs in 

 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 myriads of those useless gormands, the 

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

 honey, and transfer i t to the sections. He is eqaully care- 

 ful to keep all his~worker<!ombj 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 Dees at least a start in this important, yet expensive work 



Fig. 102. 



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

 to the apiarist — comb foundation (Fig. 102). 



HISTORY. 



For more than twenty-five 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 p arti t ion "at the~"center of n atural^ 

 comb, which is very thin L bnly*TFl8U of an inch thick. This 



