84 MANUAL OF APICULTURE. 
The supers should be promptly removed at the close of the honey 
harvest, honey boards with bee escapes in them being used to free 
them from bees, as described under the head of "Extracting." If the 
gathering season for the year has also ended, an examination of the 
brood apartment should be made to determine whether feeding is neces- 
sary, either to prolong brood rearing or for winter stores. 
PRODUCTION OF WAX. 
The progressive apiarist of the present time does not look upon the 
production of wax in so great a proportion compared with his honey 
yield as did the old-time box-hive bee keeper. The latter obtained much 
of his honey for the market by crushing the combs and straining it out, 
leaving the crushed combs to be melted up for their wax. Before the 
use of supers late swarms and many colonies quite heavy in honey were 
smothered by the use of sulphur; the light ones because their honey 
supply would not bring them through the winter, and the very heavy 
ones because of the rich yield in honey. Frequent losses of bees in 
wintering and through queenlessuess gave more combs for melting, as 
without frame hives; honey extractors, or comb- foundation machines, 
the vacated combs were not often utilized again. The wax from the 
pressed combs was all marketed, since there could be but little home 
use for it. 
The bee keeper of to-day, after having removed the honey from the 
combs by centrifugal force, returns them, but slightly injured, to be 
refilled by the bees, and at the end of the season these combs are stored 
away for use in successive years, or he secures the surplus, also apart 
from the brood, in neat sectional boxes, to be marketed as stored — that 
is, without cutting. 
The wax must therefore come from the cappings of combs where 
extracted honey is produced, from occasional broken comb, bits of drone 
comb that are cut out to be replaced by worker comb, from unfinished 
and travel-stained sections from which the honey has been extracted, 
or from old brood combs that need to be replaced. Since the price per 
pound of extracted honey is usually not less than one-third and that 
of comb honey one-half the price of wax, and it has already been indi- 
cated (p. 28) that some 12 to 15 pounds of honey may in general be 
safely reckoned as necessary to produce 1 pound of comb, it can readily 
be seen that it is much more profitable to turn the working force, in so 
far as possible, to the production of honey rather than wax, taking only 
as much wax as can be produced without lowering the yield of honey; 
and what wax is taken is practically turned into honey the following 
year, for it is made into comb foundation, which, judiciously used, 
increases in turn the season's yield of honey. 
Wax being so much more valuable than honey, it behooves the bee 
keeper to save even the smallest pieces of comb ; but during warm 
weather they must not be left long or they will serve as breeding places 
