264 
OR. miller's 
(b) On which side of a lake would you prefer to keep east or 
west side? 
A. (a) The water is not likely to do any harm, only it is just 
so much surface without any pasturage, just like so much barren 
land. If the body of water was so narrow that the bees would 
cross it to get pasturage on the other side, a few bees might be 
beaten down in crossing by high winds. 
(b) The side that had the best pasturage. 
Wax (See Beeswax.) 
Wax-Extractor. Q. How can I make a solar wax-extractor 
without much expense? Does the solar wax-extractor take out 
all the wax, especially out of old combs? 
A. Any kind of a shallow box, and of any size, covered with 
glass, so placed that the rays of the sun shall shine directly into 
it, will become hot enough on the inside to melt wax. A single 
pane of glass will do if large enough, or a common window-sash 
may be used. To hold the pieces of comb to be melted, have a 
plain sheet of tin, slanting 1 to 3 inches (according to the size of 
the box) from rear to front, so that the melted wax will run 
down into a vessel that you will place under to catch the wax. 
You may use a sheet of wire-cloth, so the wax will run through. 
This will work very nicely with cappings and burr-combs, but a 
good deal of wax will be left in old brood-combs. Especially will 
this be so if one brood-comb lies over another. 
Weak Colonies. — Q. Would it be all right to put a new swarm 
m with a weak colony and thus make a strong one out of it? 
A. Yes; but in thus uniting, the two queens should both be 
laying queens, or both virgin queens. If one has a laying queen 
and the other a virgin, they are likely to fight. 
Q. I have two colonics of bees which I hived last May. One 
of them produced about 50 pounds of surplus honey, while the 
other produced only 5 pounds. What was the matter with the 
second one? Was it an unprolific queen, or not? 
A. It may be that there was a difference in the strength of the 
two swarms at the time they were hived, and it must be remem- 
bered that a colony twice as strong as another will store a good 
deal more than twice as much surplus. The difference may have 
been in the character of the bees. Some bees are more indus- 
trious than others. 'I here may have been other causes or a com- 
bination of causes, 
