ARTIFICIAL AIDS TO COMB-BUILDING. 
173 
guides completed, a stick may be run through the 
skep, about 4in. from the bottom rim, and at right 
angles to the guides, when the combs, as built, will 
be fastened and saved from lateral sway. Skeps so 
prepared are capital travellers, and, being abnormally 
regular, are most useful for demonstrations of 
driving in bee-tent work. 
The knowledge that bees extend their comb down- 
wards indefinitely, and that the cells above determine 
the position of those below — the fact to which the 
before-going method owes its success — was followed by 
the observation that the midrib precedes the cell, and 
that the comb always grows not only downwards, but 
from the centre to the surface, and hence two, perhaps 
more refined, plans for directing comb-building were 
soon scored as successes. The first consisted in giving 
prominence to the line which the midrib was intended 
to follow; Mr. Woodbury, e.g.^ adding a central project- 
ing slip beneath his top bar, while he rounded off the 
lower angles of the latter, so that the clinging bees 
should place their “foundations” on the central line, so 
temptingly pushed before the attention of the wax- 
workers. Langstroth and others, in like manner, 
achieved the same result by setting a top bar, triangular 
or square in cross-section, with its lower faces at 
45deg. to the horizontal (Fig. ii) ; Mr. Woodbury’s 
idea being, in turn, simplified by cutting a saw-kerf 
into the top bar (D, Fig. 44), and placing within a 
wooden slip (m), which was often made additionally 
attractive by being painted with wax. 
The second process, instead of striving to coax the 
bees to place their midrib as desired, actually manu- 
