160 AUSTRALASIAN 
ADVANTAGES DERIVED FROM ITS USE. 
It has already been stated (in Chapter III.) that bees require 
to consume a large quantity of honey—taking the mean of 
experiments, about fourteen pounds— in order to secrete one 
pound of wax. Assuming the honey to be worth only fivepence 
per pound, each pound of wax thus secreted represents a value 
of nearly six shillings. By supplying wax foundation, which 
costs less than half that price, we save more than half the cost 
of the material. A still greater advantage is the saving of 
time to the bees, and the opportunities thus given them to 
store a much greater quantity of honey. Not only can they 
store, instead of making into wax, upwards of twenty pounds 
of honey, represented by some pound and a half of foundation 
supplied to the ten frames of a hive, but they can have the ten 
combs fully built out in one-fourth of the time that should be 
devoted to the building of entirely new comb; and all the bees 
that would be so employed are set free to store honey instead. 
We may reckon that in an ordinary season a fair swarm will 
work out the ten sheets of foundation in a Langstroth hive in 
one week; without the aid of the foundation it would take 
them four or five weeks. I have had swarms that worked out 
and filled with honey and brood all the sheets in a two-story 
hive, and threw off a good new swarm, within three weeks from 
the date of hiving. The time thus gained may make all the 
difference between profit and loss in a short honey season. 
Besides this saving of time and gain in honey, we secure 
straight and even combs, such as are rarely, if ever, built 
without the aid of foundation ; we can control the building of 
drone-comb, and consequently the breeding of drones within 
such limits as may be deemed advisable; and it will be found 
that, even without ithe precaution of wiring, the combs so built 
will be much stronger and will withstand the strain of extracting 
much better than those built without foundation. It is also of 
very great value in the case of swarms hived late in the season, 
which are thereby enabled to build their comb in a short time, 
and put themselves in a better condition for the winter. 
PRINCIPAL POINTS OF GOOD FOUNDATION. 
Good comb-foundation must, in the first place, be made of 
nothing but pure beeswax; various substitutes have been 
