Apiary Experiments. 
17 
ing within .11 of a grain, as they would have done if no foundation 
had been given. 
The samples of comb .56 and .60 of an inch thick on this 
foundation contain enough wax to make a natural comb one inch 
thick, and nearly half of the weight was added by the bees. 
Reliable results are not so readily obtained in the study of comb 
samples on the light foundations, as the amount of wax in them is 
small and the natural variation in comb samples is considerable. 
The thickest sample on the thin super foundation (B) was 
only .90 of an inch. To get as near an average weight of the nat¬ 
ural comb as possible for comparison, let us combine the two ex¬ 
amples that measure .90 of an inch each with those measuring re¬ 
spectively 1.00 and .80 of an inch. The average would be 8.40 
grains to the square inch. The difference between this and the 
sample on this foundation is 3.10 grains. As the foundation 
itself weighed 4.00 grains to the square inch, the indication in this 
case is that the saving to the bees was the difference between these 
weights, or .90 of a grain to a square inch, or about 23 per cent, of 
the amount of wax given. 
Far better results were obtained in the use of thin super foun¬ 
dation (A), the average weight of which was 4.07 grains to the 
square inch. 
Comparing comb 1 inch thick on this foundation with natural 
comb of the same thickness, we find, in case of one of the samples in 
the table, there is but .20 of a grain difference in favor of the latter. 
This means that this foundation lessened the amount of wax that 
the bees secreted, by 95 per cent, of its own weight. 
The above may have been rather an exceptional piece on the 
thin foundation. If we compare the sample that measured 1.20 
inches in thickness with a similar sample of natural comb, we find 
a difference of 2 grains to the square inch. As the foundation was 
almost exactly twice this weight, it indicates that the bees were re¬ 
lieved from secreting an amount of wax equal to half the weight 
of foundation given. 
It is important to notice that to build the comb on this foun¬ 
dation to the thickness of 1.20 inches, the bees added the difference 
between 11.50 and 4.07 grains to the square inch, which would be 
7.43 grains, and this is actually less than they added in cases where 
they built comb to a thickness of only one inch on the very heavy 
and the medium brood foundations, and to a thickness of 1.13 inches 
on the deep-cell foundation, though in any one of these last three 
cases they were furnished more wax to start with. 
Again, if we take the average of the two samples of comb on this 
thin foundation that were 1.25 inches thick and compare it with an 
average of the two samples of natural comb of the same thickness, 
we find that the latter is .40 of a grain lighter to the square inch 
