6 ARTIFICIAL FOUNDATIONS AND THE BUILDING OF HONEY COMB. 



.11 of a grain, as they would have used if no foundation 

 had been given. 



It was more difficult to get reliable results with the 

 very light foundations where the amount of wax used was 

 small but the results indicated that the wax was much 

 better economized by the bees, and the comb was but 

 slightly heavier than the natural, the difference being 

 almost entirely in the somewhat heavier midrib. 



One rather surprising result, which might turn out 

 differently in a larger number of trials, was that the bees 

 actually added more wax from their own secretions to the 

 heavy foundations in order to build comb of a given thick- 

 ness than to light foundations to build to the same 

 thickness. 



The experiments at least showed that a large amount 

 of wax in foundation does not economize the wax secretion 

 of the bee much more than the wax of light foundations. 

 And even when more wax is put in the foundation than is 

 necessary to build the comb, the bees still add from 50 to 

 75 per cent as much as would be necessary to build the 

 comb without foundation. 



A Few Miscellaneous Observations in Connection 

 WITH the Work. 



The proportion of wax to honey in naturally made 

 comb was found to vary between about 1 to 18 to 1 to 

 28, depending upon the thickness of the comb. The 

 thinner the comb the larger the proportion of wax in it. 

 This is because the bases of the cell walls are heavier than 

 the outer portions and the midrib is as heavy in thin as in 

 thick comb. Both the midrib and the cell walls of drone 

 comb are heavier than the same parts of worker comb. 



Wax seems to be used with best economy when the 

 midrib of the foundation is of the thinness of the midrib 

 of natural comb, and when there is a small, or at most a 

 moderate amount of wax in the cell walls. 



