BEE MANUAL. 159 



necessary to give them a fair start, at all events, and the early 

 practice was to attach a strip of old comb to the bottom of the 

 bar or the under side of the top bar of the frame. These pieces 

 of comb were called " starters," and it was no doubt with the 

 idea of furnishing such starters in a convenient manner that 

 apiarists first commenced experiments in order to produce strips 

 of manufactured comb-foundation. As soon as any success had 

 been achieved in that direction, it could not long escape the 

 notice of intelligent apiarists, that great advantages would 

 ensue if the bees could be furnished with an unerring guide 

 for the whole extent of the comb, and with a considerable 

 portion of the wax required for its construction. It was not, 

 however, until numerous experiments had been made, and a 

 considerable time had elapsed after the first successful attempt 

 to make narrow strips of comb-foundation, that the beautiful 

 sheets, with which most bee keepers are now familiar, were 

 produced. 



It appears that so early as the year 1840 or 1842 a German, 

 named. Kretchmer, used strips of linen coated with wax and 

 passed between engraved rollers to give them the impressions 

 of the bottom of the cells. His son, E. Kretchmer, of Iowa, 

 writing to the American Bee Journal of December, 1878, says: 

 " Comb-foundations were made by my father in Germany in 

 1842 ; they were made by a pair of engraved rollers, and starch 

 was used to prevent the wax from adhering to the rollers." 

 This sort of foundation does not seem to have been a success, 

 and it was not until the year 1857 that another German, Herr 

 Mehring, of Frankinthal, introduced impressed sheets of wax, 

 instead of waxed linen. These wax sheets were four or five 

 times as thick as the partition in the natural comb, which is, 

 as Prof. Cook informs us, only y^ of an inch in thickness ; 

 they were pressed between metal plates, which gave them 

 impressions corresponding to the rhomboidal bases of the 

 natural cells ; and this foundation soon found a very general 

 use in Germany. In 1874, a poor German, named Friedrich 

 Weiss, residing in America, invented the machine which brought 

 the foundation to something nearly like what is now made. 

 Professor Cook gives to him the whole credit of the invention, 

 and to Mr. A. I. Root the no less laudable merit of having, by 

 his energy and enthusiasm, brought both the roller machine 

 and the foundation into general use. 



