HONEYCOMB. 
19 
the yellow bee-bread that bees carry on their legs, as many 
suppose, but it is an animal secretion from the body of the 
bee as milk is from the cow. Rees seem possessed of the 
power of producing it whenever needed. The substance 
used to manufacture it is honey or some other saccharine 
matter. Enclose a colony of bees in a hive and feed them 
honey or dissolved sugar, and they will construct combs and 
fill them with the same. Remove these and continue to feed 
them and they will construct more combs. It is generally 
calculated that it will require about twenty pounds of honey 
to make one pound of comb, so that to feed bees to induce 
them to make combs is rather expensive ; and it is good 
economy to save all the combs possible; hence the impropriety 
of patronizing the peddler of a cheap compound of sugar, 
Cuba honey, honey and water, or anything else to feed bees 
for the purpose of constructing combs and storing honey for 
market. It will take twenty pounds of the compound to 
make one pound of comb', and in the process of storing 
the honey, perhaps, one-third is consumed by the bees; and 
when it is stored, the honey, as will be seen by referring to 
the article on honey, will be of the same quality as the article 
fed ; so that it would be far better economy to eat the article 
instead of feeding it to the bees. The small scales of wax of 
which the combs are composed ooze out between the rings 
on the under side of the abdomen of the bee. These small 
pieces are taken and worked into the structure of combs. 
Many of these small scales which have been dropped by the 
bees, may generally bo found on the bottom board the next 
morning after a colony has been hived. 
A certain temperature in a hive is necessary in order that 
wax may work well, so that a large number ol bees is always 
necessary in a hive to keep up heat, consequently, if swarms 
are very small they can spare but few bees to go abroad to 
labor. 
Rees, when left to their own instincts, cluster in the top of 
the hive, and most generally start about eight combs in a 
hive twelve inches wide, being built perpendicular and par- 
allel to each other, the edges of the combs being fastened to 
' the sideg of the hive, but no comb fastened to another. 
Combs built in surplus honey boxes will be more irregu- 
lar in shape, and are generally thicker than in the main 
chamber ; and when the cells are very deep they are curved 
