WAX 
871 
but none of them have all the desirable 
qualities furnished by the product from 
the hive. 
•HOW THE BEES “MA KE ” WAX. 
If the bees are watched closely during’ 
the height of the honey harvest, or if at 
other times a colony of bees is fed heavily 
on sugar syrup for three days during warm 
weather, there will be found toward the 
end of the second or the third day little 
pearly discs of wax, somewhat resembling 
fish scales, protruding from between the 
rings of the under side of the body of the 
bee. These when examined with a magni¬ 
fier reveal little wax scales of rare beauty. 
Sometimes these scales come so fast that 
they fall on the bottom-board and may be 
scraped up in considerable quantities, 
seeming for some reason not to have been 
wanted. During the season for the natural 
secretion of wax where a colony has plenty 
of room, wax scales are seldom wasted in 
this way. At swarming time there seem 
to be an unusual number of bees provided 
with wax scales, for when the bees remain 
clustered on a limb for only a few minutes 
bits of wax are attached as if they were 
going to start combs. 
The way the bees remove these wax 
scales from their bodies and construct them 
into comb is not so easily seen. There 
were many wild guesses as to how this was 
done. The so-called “wax-pinchers”* on 
the hind legs were supposed to play an 
important part. The matter was definitely 
cleared up by Sladen and Casteel. In 
circular No. 161 Dr. D. B. Casteel of the 
Bureau of Entomology, Washington, D. C., 
made the whole process plain. 
Briefly stated, it is this: The wax scales 
are scraped off by one of the large joints, 
or plant® of one hind leg, the spines of 
the planta piercing or catching into the 
scale; then the leg, by a peculiar 
maneuvering, is moved up to where the 
fore legs may grasp the scale. At this 
point of proceedings the scale is manipu¬ 
lated or masticated in the mandibles, when 
it is applied to the comb. During the 
process, the bee stands on three legs (the 
two middle legs on either side, and one 
* The real purpose of these is explained under 
Pollen, subhead “Behavior of Bees in Collecting 
Pollen.’ ’ 
hind leg not in action), while the other 
hind leg and the two fore legs, in connec¬ 
tion with the mandibles, perform the 
manipulation. Casteel says that the so- 
called ‘wax-pinchers” in the hind legs 
have nothing to do with the manipulation 
of wax, but are designed for another pur¬ 
pose, and that each individual bee removes 
its own wax scales. 
It has been supposed that the bees re¬ 
move the scales from each other; but Cas¬ 
teel shows that this is not the case. The 
scales are sometimes found scattered thru- 
out the hive and on the bottom-board as 
already stated. In some instances they 
show the marks of the spines of the planta 
of the hind legs. In others they were 
probably dropped accidentally by the bees 
in that wonderful sleight-of-hand perform¬ 
ance by which they transfer the scale from 
one portion of the body to the other. In 
still other cases the scales show no mark¬ 
ings whatever, and the presumption is that 
they simply fell off the bees when they 
reached a certain stage of development. 
Dr. Casteel also confirms the observa¬ 
tion of Dreyling, that there are certain 
ages and certain seasons when the bees 
will develop these wax scales more than at 
others. From this it would appear that 
there are times when the bees cannot con¬ 
struct combs to any great extent, even tho 
they are liberally fed. In a practical way 
it has been found that sometimes even 
when the bees are fed they will not build 
combs; and the probabilities are that they 
simply can not, because the colony is made 
up of bees too young, too old, or both. 
Usually the condition of a honey flow can 
be supplied artificially by feeding. 
WAX-RENDERING. 
There are two methods of rendering wax, 
one by the use of artificial heat and the 
other by the use of the sun’s rays thru a 
glass sash on the principle of a hotbed. 
When these rays pass into a glass-covered 
box a considerable amount of heat is gener¬ 
ated—enough to melt wax. As the appli¬ 
cation of the solar method is quite simple, 
it will be described first. 
SOLAR WAX-EXTRACTOR. 
1 The general design of this machine is 
after a pattern made and used by the 
