90 AUSTRALASIAN 
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 cowb- 
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 7s 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 
niyhts, 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 asmall 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, 
