carefully drain it from the beautiful
comb, he may use all such comb again to great advantage; not only saving
its intrinsic value, but greatly encouraging his bees to occupy and fill
all receptacles in which a portion of it is put. Bees seem to fancy _a
good start in life_, about as well as their more intelligent owners. To
this use all suitable drone comb should be put, as soon as it is removed
from the main hive. (See remarks on Drones.)

Ingenious efforts have been made, of late years, to construct
_artificial_ honey combs of porcelain, to be used for _feeding_ bees. No
one, to my knowledge, has ever attempted to imitate the delicate
mechanism of the bee so closely, as to construct artificial combs for
the ordinary uses of the hive; although for a long time I have
entertained the idea as very desirable, and yet as barely possible. I am
at present engaged in a course of experiments on this subject, the
results of which, in due time, I shall communicate to the public.

While writing this treatise, it has occurred to me that bees might be
induced to use old wax for the construction of their combs. Very fine
parings may be shaved off with glass, and if given to the bees, under
favorable circumstances, it seems to me very probable that they would
use them, just as they do the scales which are formed in their wax
pouches. Let strong colonies be deprived of some of their combs, after
the honey harvest is over, and supplied abundantly with these parings of
wax. Whether "nature abhors a vacuum," or not, bees certainly do, when
it occurs among the combs of their main hive. They will not use the
honey stored up for winter use to replace the combs taken from them;
they can gather none from the flowers; and I have strong hopes that
necessity will with bees as well as men, prove the mother of invention,
and lead them to use the wax, as readily as they do the substitutes
offered them for pollen. (See Chapter on Pollen.)

If this conjecture should be verified by actual results, it would exert
a most powerful influence in the cheap and rapid multiplication of
colonies, and would enable the bees to store up most prodigious
quantities of honey. A pound of bees wax might then be made to store up
twenty pounds of honey, and the gain to the bee keeper would be the
difference in price between the pound of wax, and the twenty pounds of
honey, which the bees would have consumed in making the same amount of
comb. Strong stocks might thus