90 AUSTKALASIAN 



BEES WASTING WAX. 



It has been generally asserted and believed that wax secre- 

 tion only takes place as required ; but recently two or three 

 leading bee-keepers — Mr. Doolittle amongst the number — have 

 expressed the opinion that during a heavy flow of honey the 

 secretion goes on, whether wax may be required for comb- 

 building or not ; and that at such times, if not needed, the 

 wax goes to waste. From my own observations I think these 

 cases are very rare. A certain amount of wax is wasted while 

 comb-building is going on, as may be seen by examining the 

 bottom board of a hive shortly after a swarm has been placed 

 in it, when small scales of wax will be found scattered under 

 the place where the bees are working. In accounting for this 

 waste, I am of the same opinion as Mr. Dadant ; he says : 



" The cause can be told in two words, cold nights. When bees 

 harvest honey in large quantities, the weather is often cool in the 

 nights, and very hot in the day. The wax producing bees hang in 

 clusters ; but in a cool night, those which are on the outside of the 

 cluster feel the change of temperature, and when the scales of wax 

 come out of the rings of the abdomen, if they are not at once taken by 

 other bees and fastened to their places, they become too hard for easy 

 manipulation, and are allowed to drop to the floor." He quotes an 

 instance in support of this view where he found about three dozen 

 bees of a small swarm, upon which the wax had cooled so promptly 

 that the little white scales were still fastened in the rings of their 

 abdomen. 



EXTRAVAGANT WASTE OF WAX. 



There is a much more serious waste of wax going on in these 

 colonies, that might easily be avoided. The number of bush 

 hives taken by bushmen and country settlers every season must 

 be enormous, yet probably in not one case out of a hundred is 

 the wax saved. A country settler once informed me that he 

 and others had taken about fifty bush hives during the season, 

 and when asked what he had done with the wax, he replied, 

 " Oh, we threw it away." Now each bush hive will, on an 

 average, yield four pounds, or more, of clean wax, worth at 

 the present time from tenpence to one shilling per pound, with 

 a market demand for it far beyond the supply. Careless bee- 

 keepers also waste much wax by not taking care of the pieces 

 of comb that will accumulate about an apiary. If all the pieces, 



