ARTIFICIAL AIDS TO COMB-BUILDING. 183 
sheets were converted into combs in twenty hours, 
besides having many eggs laid in them. 
It is the fashion to prefer worker-comb to drone for 
supers and sections. It is more than a mere fashion, 
as we shall note when treating of honey ; but it cannot 
be denied that drone-sized cells store more in propor- 
tion to the amount of wax required, and demand, in 
proportion to their area, less labour in their construc- 
tion by the bees, who in them deposit no pollen; and 
so I determined to be able to secure drone-celled mid- 
ribs for my supers. Carving at the old comb had proved 
that the lozenges all disappear. I have now shown 
that the excrement of the larvae fills up the corners 
(page 22, Vol. I.), and that all cells, as constructed, 
are at first curvilinear in their concave bases ; these 
and other reasons convinced me then, and still do so, 
that cup-like concavities are theoretically correct for 
artificial midribs. Following this line, I procured the 
extremely large shot called SSG, drove them through 
a jin. hollow punch, arranged them in due order in 
a tray, heated them, and filled in their interstices with 
paraffin wax, then took a cast from them in plaster, 
soaked this cast in paraffin, and took another from it, 
which, for my new purpose, replaced /w. Fig. 48. 
The sheets were brush-made, as before ; the top 
bars of the supers then in use simply taking the 
position before given to the top bar of the frame. 
These drone midribs worked to my fullest satis- 
faction. One instance of their performance will 
suffice. I fully furnished three Woodbury supers, 
each bin. deep, and exhibited the result at the 
Alexandra Palace. The whole of the combs (built 
