wax 
873 
many layers of cocoons found in the cells 
used for brood-rearing confine the wax and 
make it hard to remove. It can be readily 
seen that, if old comb is simply melted in 
hot.water or steam, these cocoons will be¬ 
come saturated with wax, making the loss 
very great. The following discussion, 
therefore, will have to do especially with 
the difficulties encountered in rendering 
wax from old combs. 
Fig. 2.—A very crude and wasteful method of 
rendering. 
There are many different methods prac¬ 
ticed by beekeepers to obtain the wax from 
old brood-combs; and it is needless to say 
that, in many of them, the loss is consider¬ 
able. One of the crudest methods is to 
throw the combs into a large iron kettle of 
water and then build a fire and boil the con¬ 
tents for several hours, skimming the wax 
off the top of the water meanwhile. More 
comb is added from time to time, and the 
process is continued perhaps all day. Final¬ 
ly a piece of wire screen is weighted down 
on the refuse to keep it out of the way and 
Fig. 3.—A popular but wasteful and slow method 
of obtaining wax. 
facilitate dipping the wax. Careful ex¬ 
periments have shown that this method 
wastes from 25 to 40 per cent of the total 
amount of wax, while much time is re¬ 
quired to clean and refine what little wax 
is secured. 
Another plan which has been advocated 
to some extent is that shown in Fig. 2. A 
sack of comb is held under the surface of 
the water, and agitated or punched with a 
stick for a long time until much of the 
wax is released and floats to the surface, 
where it may be dipped off. This method 
results in somewhat cleaner wax; but there 
is apt to be waste nearly equal to that in 
the plan before mentioned. 
There is another method that is used 
more, perhaps, than the two which have 
just been described. It is a somewhat bet¬ 
ter plan, for the amount of waste is not so 
great. It is shown in Fig. 3. In order to 
get the best results the weights should be 
so arranged that they can be lifted up a 
few inches in order to give the refuse in 
the sack a chance to become saturated again 
with hot water. The weights should then 
be lowered, and this process kept up for 
several hours, the water meanwhile boiling 
vigorously. The wax should be dipped off 
almost as fast as it rises to the surface. 
Fig. 4.—An unhandy and unsatisfactory plan. 
In 1904 T. J. Pennick of Williston, 
Tenn., suggested the use of centrifugal 
force applied to hot slumgum just taken 
out of boiling water. It was his opinion 
that the free wax, when hot, would by this 
means readily separate from the solid mat¬ 
ter in a very short time. Extensive experi¬ 
ments have developed the fact that there 
would be a great deal of wax which would 
not escape from the refuse, no matter how 
fast it might be whirled in an extractor, 
showing that even great centrifugal force 
could not separate the wax from the refuse. 
Wax nearest the outside might be thrown 
out; but that nearest the center would be 
held back and not escape. 
A. C. Miller of Providence, ft. I., some 
time ago devised an agitator and applied 
